


Summer Nights Part 2

by Kari_Kurofai



Series: Summer!Verse [2]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: F/F, F/M, It's not gay if it's a threeway, M/M, Multi, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-25
Updated: 2014-04-25
Packaged: 2018-01-20 17:51:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 38,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1519772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kari_Kurofai/pseuds/Kari_Kurofai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Michael. It was only sex. Get over it.”</p><p>Well that's fucking easier said than done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Summer Nights Part 2

**Author's Note:**

> I have so much to say about this crap but I'll save most of it for the end, and only talk about the important things right now.
> 
> 1.) Yes Lindsay and Michael become closer in this part. Don't freak out, it's platonic. Mostly.
> 
> 2.) This story was born from my need to write a Gavin who was stubbornly straight with a singular, obvious exception. So there you go.
> 
> 3.) MASSIVE thanks to Thunderblitz, who put up with my whining about this fic and sending her pieces of it and generally being a nuisance to her over skype because I am a feedback whore. 
> 
> 4.) Apologies for typos, I wanted to post this before I had to work on essays for finals this weekend and just decided, "Fuck it, I'll do a more in depth beta later." So I'll find and fix that shit when I'm not sweating over the two 30pg essays I have due in four days and haven't started.
> 
> 5.) There's a cameo by a pair of youtube dorks in this part, though they're not mentioned by name. Kudos to whoever spots it and knows who they are. Lindsay even references them with a line she says at one point, though that's going to be even harder to catch.

Michael keeps his phone clutched tight in hand the entire way to Carnaby until his knuckles are white with strain and his palm is sticky with sweat against the screen. It’s like a lifeline, a weight to remind him to not completely lose his shit as the seconds of sheer awkward agony tick by.

_“Michael. It was only sex. Get over it.”_

And Gavin, Gavin just fucking carries on as if nothing ever happened. He’s all smiles from the moment they exit the elevator, pointing out new sights and bouncing on his heels the exact same way he’s done nearly every second since they met.

_“It was only sex. Get over it.”_

He’s completely oblivious to the fact that Michael’s only responses to his unwavering enthusiasm are the occasional dismissive grunt or shrug. The worst of it, besides Gavin carrying on as usual and the uncomfortable, painful tug in his stomach at the mere thought of the night before, is that Michael just doesn’t fucking understand. How the fuck can someone just ignore something like this? How can Gavin fucking Free just wipe the slate clean without a second thought, let alone act as if everything was normal? He can’t fathom it, let alone attempt to imitate it, and with every passing minute Michael finds himself shying further and further away from Gavin’s unabated cheer.

_“Get over it.”_

The thing is, he realizes with a pang, Gavin’s probably done this quite a few times. Picked people up at bars and clubs while buzzed, taken them home, done the horizontal tango, and then casually hung them out to dry. It’s a routine, one he’s done often enough that he didn’t think twice about pulling the same shit on Michael.

Fucking asshole.

Michael squeezes his phone in his pocket as it vibrates, snapping him out of his mental mauling of a certain British buttmunch.

_Ray: “I’ll be fine” is the cliché line from every chick flick in existence. And as someone who has spent the past week being forced to watch a good dozen of said chick flicks, I’m gonna tell you you’re full of shit. Also, you’re a girl_

_Michael: I’ll take that as a compliment. Now fuck off. I said I’ll be fine, so I’ll be fine_

_Ray: Look, dude, you’re the one who came to me to cry on my long-distance shoulder. So don’t fuck with me_

_Michael: What do you want me to say, Ray? That I feel like a fucking piece-of-shit idiot? Weep about how I have “feelings” and crap? Forget it_

_Ray: Oh, god. Are you for real? Feelings?_

_Michael: The second I get home I’m going to throw you off the complex’s roof_

_Ray: You slept with him and you caught feelings. Fuck, dude._

_Michael: Shit’s contagious. Probably caught them awhile ago._

_Ray: Michael . . ._

_Michael: But like any horrible disease, I will recover. Now fuck off_

Seriously, whoever said honesty was the key can go die in a fire. Just typing that was agonizing. And yeah, for once it wasn’t a lie. Go figure. But there’s no fucking way he’s going to go into any detail about that, like, ever. Not even to Ray.

There’s no point, is there. Not anymore. An hour ago, maybe two, there might have been. Back when Michael had just been blinking into wakefulness, his head full of fuzzy thoughts and contemplations of late-night videogames, spitting off bridges, double-decker busses, and secretive gallery photographs. An hour or two ago, he’d spent a moment trying to pinpoint the exact second he’d started down the path that lead him to sleeping in the same bed with Gavin. There wasn’t one, really, he’d discovered. There wasn’t a specific spark. Rather, it had been more of a series of them, little flickers of electric contact that built up until he’d found himself naked and pinned to the floor.

Like hell he’ll ever tell Ray that though. Especially not now, not with the heavy, sharp statement of _“Get over it”_ ringing in his ears.

If Michael had any breath to spare, he’s sure he’d have bitterly laughed about it by now. Multiple times even. But every spare bubble of air he has jams in his throat, tight and uncomfortable and stinging the corners of his eyes. And he can’t let Gavin see that, he’d honestly rather fucking die.

His mind now wandering back onto the unavoidable again, Michael chances a look in Gavin’s direction. It’s just the barest glance, done from the corner of his eyes as nonchalantly as possible, yet Gavin still catches it. A crook of a smile works its way into his lips and Michael’s heart jumps a beat in his chest. “You excited to see Carnaby?” Gavin asks. There’s a skip in his step when he speaks, and it picks up a bit when he notices Michael’s gaze on him. “I’ve never been. I know that’s weird, you’ve already told me so half a dozen times that it’s odd I haven’t been to London before. But I mean, how often do you go outside your home town?”

“Hardly ever,” Michael admits, careful to keep his tone as even and normal as possible. The lump in his throat can go fuck itself. Seriously. “I’m from New York, there’s no reason to go anywhere else. Oxfordshire is a dinky place in comparison though, so you don’t get to pass with the same excuse.”

Gavin frowns, falling back a step so he can match Michael’s pace stride for stride. “Are we really going to have this argument again? Can’t we find something new to have a row over?” He grins again. “Like who gets stuck carrying Barbara’s bags? I’ll play you for it. Loser gets to be the bag boy.” He promptly holds an open palm and smacks the closed fist of his other hand on top of it.

Michael stares, utterly flabbergasted as it dawns upon him that Gavin’s just challenged him to a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors. What the fuck. How the hell did he so easily revert back to the playful back-and-forth banter they’d carried on before last night? Gavin has shrugged back on his carefree demeanor as one would a coat, as easily and habitual as if he’d been doing it for years. Michael tries not to grit his teeth at the thought, instead focusing on returning Gavin’s goad for a game. “Fine.” He mimics the position of Gavin’s hands with his own, fist hovering over his open palm. “On three then. One, two, three.”

Less than a second later Gavin jumps up and crows in victory, his first two fingers splayed in the scissors position over Michael’s flat-handed paper. Fuck.

“I am the champion!” He points at Michael. “Bag-boy!”

“Best three out of five,” Michael protests, though he knows it’s no use. No moron in the world would agree to that.

“Oh no, my little boy.” Gavin smirks and pats Michael consolingly on the cheek, and Michael tries to ignore the way the words “my” and “boy” travel straight to his groin. “Don’t be a sore loser. Now come on.”

Before Michael can so much as let out a word of protest, let alone fight him off, Gavin has hooked a hand into the hood of Michael’s coat and is tugging him along down the road. It takes Michael a moment to right himself, to overcome the mingled feelings of fury and utter confusion and struggle out of Gavin’s grasp. Once he does so, absolutely seething to the point where his shoulders are shaking ever so slightly, Gavin merely raises an eyebrow at him. “The fuck is wrong with you?!” Michael spits.

Gavin shrugs, “Just having a bit of fun, Michael. No need to get minged up about it.” He cocks his head a little to the right, lips pursing. “Or am I not allowed to be your friend anymore?”

It’s the closest he’s come to mentioning the subject since they left the hotel, and it makes every inch of Michael grow cold. God, no. That’s not what he wants at all. Yes, he’s pissed off, but he’s not stupid enough to allow that to ruin the entirety of the trip thus far. Is he? Michael sighs and runs a tired hand through his hair from forehead to the back of his neck. “I don’t know, Gav.”

He’s starting to think telling the truth is a hell of a lot worse than lying.

Somehow, Gavin seems to take that as a legitimate, firm and standing answer, and he beckons Michael to follow him again as he returns to walking calmly down the sidewalk. Hesitantly, Michael follows. For awhile, he thinks the sudden silence between them is the lull before the storm, that Gavin’s taking his time to arrange what he wants to say in his head. But after Gavin gaily points out a “lovely” window display in a toy store they pass, Michael realizes the matter has been dropped. Permanently. “They’ve got little teddys that have a smoosh face just like yours,” he coos, pointing at the plushes in the window and pulling Michael forward to look at them simultaneously.

Of course Michael would much rather talk about it, would much rather brawl and yell about it until his voice was hoarse. Except there’s no point. Gavin doesn’t care, and as far as Michael can see there’s no way for him to change that.

_“It was just sex. Get over it.”_

He’d give anything to bounce back that easily.

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

If Michael knew where he could fill out a form to recommend new recruits for the X-Men, he’d would sign Barbara up immediately because she’s _fucking psychic_. Or she’s good at reading people. Either way, the sheer fury that enters her gaze ten seconds after they reunite with her is utterly terrifying. She eyes them up and down, nothing but a quick once-over, and then she’s lunged at Gavin and hooked a hand into the collar of his t-shirt. Gavin’s squeak of fright is more than enough to make Michael jump back, worried he’ll be next on the death-toll list once she’s done mauling Gavin.

Apparently he need not have been concerned, as the first words out of Barbara’s mouth are, “You stupid British fuck! You couldn’t keep your fucking dick in your pants, could you?! Seriously?!” Gavin sputters, wide-eyed, and Barbara stares him down for a long moment before releasing him. “Go run ahead and I’ll text you where to meet us for lunch. I don’t want to see your fucking idiot face until then. Got it?”

Gavin nods, scurrying off without argument. Michael can practically see a tail tucked between his legs. Christ.

And then Barbara’s attention is a hundred percent on Michael. Shit mc-nuggets. Michael swallows as she approaches, hands going to his hoodie pocket to nervously curl around his camera.

“On a scale of one to ten,” Barbara says once she’s standing in front of him. “How much did the ‘It’s just sex’ line sting?”

Well there goes keeping that a secret.

Michael shrugs, “Maybe like a three.”

Barbara narrows her eyes.

“. . . Or a seven . . .” Michael amends, fidgeting under her gaze. “Seven bordering on eight?”

“Fuck.”

For the second time in less than twenty-four hours Michael suddenly finds himself enveloped in Barbara’s arms. And as with everything else she does, Barbara’s hugs are no-holds barred. She doesn’t loosen her grip, let alone let go until Michael has returned the gesture, holding her just as tight as she holds him. He lets his head drop down to her shoulder with a sigh. Why the hell didn’t he bother to make any girl friends like this back in New York? Barbara’s funny and soft and gives great hugs and terrible jokes, he needs more Barbaras in his life. And less Gavins. “I screwed up,” he says when she finally lets go in order to look him in the eye.

“No,” Barbara insists. “I did. I saw Gavin’s interest at you almost from the start and I didn’t try and dissuade him. I didn’t think he’d be dumb enough to act on it, especially since as far as I know he’s never gone for any guys before.”

Wait. What?

“He sure seemed to know what he was doing for someone who doesn’t like dick,” Michael mutters sourly, admittedly a little stunned by this new information. He doesn’t know if that makes the whole situation better or worse. If Gavin wasn’t into it, that morning’s reaction stung a little less. But if Michael was just a drunken experiment . . . “Are you sure?”

Barbara bites her lip, “Fairly, yeah. He’s one of those guys that tends to flaunt his heterosexuality, you know?” She catches the disbelieving look in Michael’s eyes. “Despite the way he dresses and acts sometimes, yes. Don’t subscribe to stereotypes, Michael.”

“So I was a plaything for a mildly bicurious nimrod?” Michael says lowly. “Great. That’s just great. I feel so much better.”

“I’m sorry.”

Michael snaps his teeth down on his tongue, holding in every smart remark that he can think of in favor for a quiet, “It’s not your fault.” Because it isn’t. Why the fuck is Barbara even apologizing to him as though she could have somehow kept this all from happening? She’s not actually a friggen seer, she couldn’t have known. Besides that, Michael concedes, there’s really no one at fault here but himself. He was supposed to spend this trip getting over the hangups he’d left behind, not piling on new ones. And whether or not Gavin had just been using him to test the same-sex-banging waters, while a factor, is not the point. “I’m the one who thought a little too much of it,” he tells her around the lump in his throat. “It won’t happen again.”

The gaze Barbara levels him with, to his relief, isn’t pitying. Instead she just looks sad, and he’s not sure if that’s worse. “I can still punch him for you, if you want.”

Michael laughs. “No, don’t. It’s fine. I’ll . . . I’ll get over it.”

And god, he hopes that’s true.

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

Michael makes good on his rock-paper-scissors deemed position as Barbara’s bag boy, carrying her purchases until they get to lunch. Luckily it’s not as much as he’d expected, and most of it seems to be souvenirs for other people. They’re sitting at a table outside an open-patio restaurant Barbara says the new guide book she picked up claims is good but cheap, two things Michael has no complaints with. The fact that she keeps calling the waiter “Garçon” is something he’s a bit less fond of. She texted Gavin a half hour ago to meet them, but he has yet to show. She insists he’s always late, but his absence is starting to wear Michael a bit thin. Not with annoyance, per say, although that is a factor. He’s starting to suspect that Gavin treats his friends in a manner not so dissimilar to how he treats his one night stands, and the fact that now Michael is both of those makes him feel a little ill. Mainly, his concern is with the fact that the lack of Gavin is starting to feel very much like what he assumes a missing limb might. Painful in the sense that there’s a noticeable empty space in his life. And that’s only after a couple of hours.

It’s a sign that Michael is on the precipice of being really and truly in trouble when it comes to Gavin Free. Especially considering the response he’s already received on the matter. He needs to find someone or something new to focus his attention on, Michael decides, the sooner the better.

“So what happened with you and Lindsay last night?” he asks before he can stop himself, twirling a cell phone charm with a keyblade on it around his finger as he speaks. Barbara had picked up for her brother earlier that day. “Did you have fun?”

Barbara looks up from her cocktail, still sipping at it while she eyes Michael across the table. She pops the straw out of her mouth and swipes a thumb across her bottom lip. “I don’t kiss and tell.”

Ah. Well that’s information enough, isn’t it.

“You gonna kick us out of hotel room again tonight?”

The thought of ending another day of this trip taking care of drunk Gavin isn’t something he wants to deal with. Thankfully, Barbara shakes her head almost as soon as the question is out of his mouth. “Nah. We talked about it. It’s not good to get super involved with anyone while on trips like this, ya’know?”

For fucks sake, Michael thinks with an inward groan. That would have been a nice thing to know, like, _yesterday_.

“Smart,” he says bitterly. “What sort of tactics do you recommend for someone too dumb to have that much forethought?”

Barbara leans across the table and gives him a consoling pat on the hand. “Ice cream. So much ice cream.” Michael has to admit, that does sound like a pretty good solution. Or at least a better one than stewing in his own angst, which is his current and failing strategy.

With Ray, Michael had told himself to get over it, set the boundary lines by his own hand and kept to them because he honestly wanted and needed to. It was easier that way, like how training yourself to break a bad habit is so much simpler than being scolded into trying. When a child is told not to do something, their knee-jerk reaction is defiance. And though Michael would like to boast otherwise, in many parts of his mindset he’s not much better than a rebellious kid. Being told, being forced to “Get over it” is hardly the same as doing it on your own will. Everything inside him urges him to fight against it, to ignore what Gavin said and be angry and resentful forever. That certainly would be easier, especially with Barbara steadfastly on his side. But at the end of it all . . .

Michael is tired. He’s just so god damn tired of everything. He’s tired of being heartsick for Ray who’s half a world away, tired of feeling and being alone, and tired of holding everyone at arm’s length. If he refuses Gavin’s offer of continued friendship he’ll just be repeating this cycle, and Michael’s not sure if he has the strength left in him to do that.

Leaning heavily to the left, his arm supporting his drooping head, Michael asks, “What are you going to do after this?”

Barbara lifts an eyebrow, “Um . . . More shopping.”

A snort escapes him. “No. After this trip. Are you going to college?”

With the straw of her cocktail between her teeth, Barbara chews this question over for a moment. “I’ve been accepted into a few, and I’ve applied for classes at the one I like, but I don’t really know. I haven’t chosen a field or degree or whatever, if that’s what you mean. I don’t like the idea of having to choose what I’m going to do for the rest of my life so quickly.” She shudders a little. “I mean, what if I end up picking something I realize I don’t actually like further down the road. Or god forbid, I find out I’m not good at anything that’s offered.” She drops the straw from her mouth and flicks it to spin around the rim of the glass. “What about you?”

“I think I fall into that last category,” Michael says. “I’m not really good at anything. I didn’t even apply for college.” He lets out a hushed, choked laugh. “I told my, uh . . . I told my guardians I was going to try and go straight to an internship instead, but I haven’t applied for any of that shit either. What the fuck am I supposed to apply for if I don’t even know what I want to do?” He shrugs. “I’m just a disappointment.”

Barbara frowns. “What do you _like_ to do?”

Michael’s arm falls to the table top, his head following as he rests his chin in the crook of his elbow. “Don’t know. That’s the problem.”

He blinks as Barbara slides her drink across the table to him, the chilled glass hitting the back of his knuckles. “You need that more than I do,” she insists when Michael glances up at her. And really, Michael has no room to argue. He downs the margarita or whatever the fuck it is in a few quick gulps, the straw bouncing out of the glass when he slams it back down on the table.

Barbara begins an impressed round of applause. “Well there’s plenty more where that came from. My treat.” She starts to motion towards the waiter, but Michael pushes her hand back down with a shake of his head.

“No, I’m good. I don’t really want to get drunk again anytime soon and entice a repeat performance of stupid out of myself.” He groans as she levels him with another sympathetic look. There’s something suspicious about her gaze this time though, but whatever hunch has flickered to life in her mind, Barbara doesn’t voice it. Instead, she calls the waiter over and orders another round for herself.

“Whatever gets you through the day, dude.”

It’s just as these words leave Barbara’s mouth that Gavin slides into the chair to Michael’s right on the small round table. Michael immediately stiffens, his guard and metaphorical hackles rising with a sharp inhale of breath. The motion doesn’t go unnoticed, as Gavin levels him with an unwavering glare while he scoots his chair up a little further. “I assume you spent this whole time talking about me,” he says. There’s an equal level of defensiveness in his gaze too, Michael notices. “That’s quite rude, you know.” Gavin folds his hands under his chin, fingers laced together while he turns his gaze down towards the menu sitting on the table.

Barbara roles her eyes, and Michael takes the hint not to fall for Gavin’s bait and trap. Bringing this whole stupid affair up again won’t end well for any of them, and quite frankly Michael would rather just not talk about it ever and move on. If Gavin wants to be a dick, then let him. Michael has fucking better things to do than spend the rest of this trip crying about his feelings, eating ice cream, and watching chick flicks. Although if he suddenly decides to lapse into such stupidity Barbara will be the first person he calls.

“So . . . Shopping,” Michael clears his throat. “Where should we go to next? Cause I was kinda eyeing the chocolate shop two doors over.”

There’s something darkly comforting in knowing Gavin is glaring at him, Michael thinks as he points towards the direction he thought the aforementioned confectionary store was located. It’s hardly what he’d call payback, and quite frankly Michael knows all too well that his bark is worse than his bite, but Gavin sure as hell doesn’t. And letting him feel the brunt of the cold shoulder Michael’s giving him should serve as a good enough warning.

Whether or not they’ve decided to stay on good terms in front of Barbara doesn’t mean Michael isn’t allowed to treat his actions the way they should be treated. Of course he won’t openly badmouth Gavin, won’t physically lash out at him (even if he could, Michael’s not sure he would have enough strength left in him to, anyways), however no one said anything about flat out ignoring the shit out of the guy. At least for now.

Because god knows Michael doesn’t even have the patience to hold up a grudge.

His phone buzzes in his pocket, and Michael pulls it out and flicks a glance down at the screen.

_Ray: Puppies with more bark than bite can be pretty scary too. Don’t forget that._

_Michael: Stop reading my mind from half a world away, twatwaffle_

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

“You’re not going to go?” Barbara whines for what must be somewhere between the sixth and tenth time that night. Michael lost count a while ago because he doesn’t care.

“For the millionth and final time, _no_ ,” he says through gritted teeth, eyes never straying from his laptop.

“Why?”

With a groan, Michael chances a glance up to see Barbara hovering over him. Her hair and makeup have been done in record time, and her arms are folded over the large t-shirt she’s wearing as a dress over her leggings. Michael arches an eyebrow as he looks her up and down, “Is that my shirt?” He doesn’t know why he even asks, because it’s clearly his. Lifting one arm, he makes a spinning motion with his finger. Barbara complies with a giggle, twirling round so that Michael can see that she’s tightened the too-loose thing by cutting a slit in the back and tying it make it more form fitting. “At least ask before you take things that aren’t yours, let alone ruin them,” he scolds.

“I‘m not stealing it, it’s a trade,” Barbara says smugly. “You know, for the shirt I gave you last night.”

Michael blinks, desperately trying to stuff down the memory of Gavin ripping said shirt off his body on the floor of the borrowed hotel room. He clears his throat, “Fine, fine. Whatever, just get out of here.”

To his utter horror, Barbara does no such thing, and instead closes his laptop on his fingers and plops down beside him on the bed. “You’re being a party pooper, you know.”

“I’m aware,” Michael huffs. “But quite frankly, I don’t give a flying fucknugget, Barbara. Really, I don’t.” He extracts his hand from where she crushed it in his laptop so that he can gesture with it towards the door with the right amount of dramatic effect. “What do you want me to do, though? Go out there and get drunk off my ass again? Land myself in yet another shitty situation? Did you forget the bit where we had that heart-to-heart about Ray? And how I was trying to untangle myself from a fucked up situation? Cause I do, and right after that I managed to get myself into an even more fucked up one like a god damn idiot!” He smacks the hand to his face, wincing as he runs it down to pinch at the bridge of his nose. “I’m like a moth to a friggen flame here, and until I can get a hold of my shit, I think I should just stay in. That way I won’t, you know . . .” He draws off and swallows. “ . . . Don’t get burned again.”

When he looks up again, he’s surprised to see that Barbara’s gaze isn’t pitying. Instead, she just shakes her head at him, shoulders slumped like she’s the one who has something to be upset about. “I wish the entire world was like you, Michael Jones,” she whispers so quietly Michael barely hears it. Before he can ask what the ever loving fuck that’s supposed to mean, she’s reached up and slapped her hands onto either side of his face, and not gently, either. “You’re an idiot,” she says very fiercely, “A stupid, stupid idiot. The problem isn’t that you’re getting burned, but that you’re scared to be burned.”

“I have no idea what you’re saying-”

“Shut the fuck up.” She tightens her grip on the sides of his face. “With both Ray and with Gavin, you just don’t get it, do you?”

“You’re freaking me out.”

“I said shut up. You’re getting burned because you let shit happen to you, Michael Jones, and you’re too good of a person to understand that. So I’m going to warp the crap out of your brain right now and tell you the truth.” She inhales, and Michael feels like the room is shrinking around them with the intensity of her stare. “Nothing will ever change unless you make things happen. Stop standing on the sidelines, and get out into the world.”

Michael’s first and foremost thought to this is that he should get the fuck out. Run like the god damn wind, Bullseye, he’s done. His second thought is to tell Barbara to mind her own business and let him sulk. But he does neither of those things because, well, Barbara is right. And while he’s loathe to admit that, he’s not really one to turn his nose up at straight up facts. Michael swallows, “What should I do?” he asks, his teeth biting down on his lip as his voice wavers on the last word, betraying the shaking anxiety that stretches down all the way to his soul.

“Get the fuck up, get dressed, and go punch Gavin in the face,” Barbara says firmly, each syllable punctuated by a pat to his cheeks.

Michael grins.

OoOoOoOoO

The club they end up at isn’t really much different than the one from the night before. It has the same too-loud music, too-bright multicolored lights, and a bunch of drunk-ass people. True, they’re different drunk-ass people, but Michael doesn’t really give a fuck.

“This was a bad idea,” he says to absolutely no one, nursing a glass of sadly rum-less coke in an attempt to follow the Ray way of existing (which is painfully sober). The bar Michael is seated along the corner of is packed with idiots trying to scream out their drink orders over the music blasting around them, and Michael hunches into himself on the stool as yet another nincompoop bumps into him. He’s starting to wish he hadn’t shooed Barbara off as soon as they’d entered the place, now desperately missing her company. He’d insisted he’d be fine on his own, and with every second that passes Michael realizes how untrue that statement had been. In fact, he should have just stayed in the hotel because, seriously, who was he kidding. He was going to punch Gavin? Ha! What the hell for? Sure, he’d been a dickhead, probably the most supreme dickhead Michael had ever encountered in his entire life thus far, but he’d just gone about things the way he usually did.

It was Michael who had read the situation wrong. If anyone was to blame for the confuckery that had been wrecking turmoil in his head since he’d woken up, it was Michael himself.

Then again, he thinks as he catches a glimpse of something infuriating through the throng of idiots writhing on the dance floor, maybe not.

The crowd parts again, just enough so that Michael gets another obnoxious peek, and he bites his lip to hold in a scream of rage. It’s Gavin, Gavin motherfucking Free dancing like a god damn noodle with some pretty brunette in the middle of the floor. It’s not exactly a confirmation of Barbara’s earlier information, per say, but it certainly isn’t helping Michael’s self esteem any. Because there’s Gavin, pulling the same moves he did just last night on Michael, on some friggen random chick he just met. And seriously, not similar moves, like how everyone has a style, but the _exact same fucking moves_. Watching Gavin runs his fingers down the girl’s sides, clench them against her hips while he breathes against the shell of her ear, it honestly makes Michael feel ill. He wonders if she’s going to be just another quickie, and if she is whether or not she knows that.

“He’ll probably pork her, and then during the rest of the week when she keeps trying to text him for a second date, he’ll just ignore her.”

Michael nearly falls right off the barstool, eyes widening as he twists around to see Barbara standing no more than a foot away, a martini between her fingers. “Jesus Christ,” he gasps.

“Bzzzt. Incorrect. I’m Barbara Dunkelman,” she grins. Michael taps his fingers against his glass and contemplates the pros and cons of dumping coke all over her head.

Shifting his attention back the nauseating scene on the dance floor, Michael asks, “Is that what he usually does? The whole ‘Wam, bam, thank you ma’am’ sort of deal?”

Barbara sighs and takes the barstool to Michael’s left. “Yeah, usually. I feel bad for the girls who get sucked into his trap, but at the same time I can’t really begrudge him for his life choices, either. It’s probably pretty nice not having the stress of an actual relationship on your shoulders, you know?”

“I think he watched too much _Friends_ growing up,” Michael mutters against the lip of his glass before taking another sip. Bleh. Coke. “He probably thinks its funny, has real life mixed up with sitcoms where idiot playboys are fan favorites.” When Barbara doesn’t respond, Michael turns towards her, blinking when he sees that she’s staring at him. “What?”

“If Gavin is Joey, can I be Chandler?” she asks.

It takes Michael a moment to process what the fuck she’s just said, and when he does he nearly chokes on his coke as he stifles a laugh. “Yeah. You’ve both got the shitty jokes thing down pat.” Barbara preens as though that’s some sort of compliment, which it really wasn’t but whatever. Michael finishes the last of his coke and slides it away from him with a motion for the bartender for another. “What does that make me, then? Oh! Can I be the monkey? I wanna be the fucking monkey. Or the duck. Or maybe Richard, cause he’s like a suave old rich dude who gets to bang younger women.”

“Rachel,” Barbara says resolutely.

Michael falters, “What? No.”

“It fits perfectly,” she insists.

Whatever argument Michael was going to make is cut short as his attention is once again captured by the pair on the dance floor. He sees Gavin take the girl’s hand out of the corner of his eyes, and his gaze tracks them as they move towards the back of the bar where Michael can make out a door illuminated by the green light of an exit sign. Yeah, okay, fuck this. No more silly conversations about nineties shows and drinks lacking liquor content. He’s going to do what he came here to do.

Which is to give Gavin a piece of his mind.

He slides off the barstool without further ado, ignoring Barbara’s worried exclamation as he shoves his way through the crowd. So maybe he doesn’t know what he wants to do with his future, and maybe he lets things happen to him, takes a position on the side lines of his own life. Maybe he’s accustomed to getting burned.

But god damn it, he’s no one’s fucking bicurious, one night stand _plaything_. And anyone who thinks so has another thing coming to them. Another Thing, huh, that’s a good name for his fist, actually, Michael decides as he balls his right hand at his side. Everyone should name their fists witty shit like that so that it feels ten times better when they clock asshats upside the head. Shit, Barbara is infecting him with bad puns.

Gavin is preoccupied by the girl’s mouth on his when Michael grabs him by the back of his shirt collar, and he lets out a yelp as Michael tugs him away. “What the- Michael?!”

And god, Michael wants to punch him. He really does. It’s the one thought that sticks in his mind as he shoulders between Gavin and the girl to push Gavin up against the wall. He wants to punch his fucking lights out, leave the dude looking like the broken and bleeding mess Michael feels like. Hell, he even raises his newly nicknamed fist to do it, rears it back with every intention to swing it forward right into Gavin’s stupid, oversized nose.

He doesn’t. How long he stands there, one hand gripping the front of Gavin’s shirt and pressing him back into the wall and the other pulled back with the want and need to hurt, he doesn’t know. The girl flees though, he watches her go in his peripherals with a satisfied feeling churning in his gut.

“Michael!” Gavin repeats, sounding significantly panicked now. “What are you doing?!”

Michael purses his lips, everything that he’d allowed to boil up in his head and in his heart since that morning simmering down the second his eyes meet Gavin’s. What is he doing? What will this solve? It’s certainly not going to make Gavin apologize, let alone turn back time.

“You know,” Michael says finally, teeth gritted around every syllable, “for someone who isn’t into dudes, you sure liked rutting up against one last night.”

Gavin chokes back an odd noise that Michael mentally files away for examination at a later time. “Wha- Are you still on about that? Michael, I told you, it was just sex! A roll in the hay!”

“Oh, shut up,” Michael snaps. “I don’t care. I seriously don’t. You’re the biggest fucking asshole in the universe and I don’t give a shit anymore. What I do care about is you using me to dick around with some of your obvious and niggling bicuriosity! Or worse, like some kind of vent for your closeted bullshit!”

The way Gavin’s face hardens, like he’s mentally putting up a wall the instant the words leave Michael’s mouth, seems to suck all the air out of the space between them. It leaves Michael feeling terribly cold. “Look,” Gavin says, low and dangerous despite the fact that right now he’s the one who’s pinned to the wall by a pissed off, painfully sober American. “My sexual preference really isn’t any of your business, but since you’re so interested, I like girls. Always have, always will. And quite frankly, you’re just a drunken mistake.”

This is the point where Michael should punch him, the point where he should let his knuckles meet Gavin’s face and send the asshole’s stupid head slamming back against the wall. Instead, he merely lets his hand finally fall back to his side, fingers twitching and balling into the bottom hem of his shirt. “Fuck you,” he spits, eyes trained on the floor because he’s sure that if he meets Gavin’s eyes again, he’ll fucking shatter from the inside out.

And really, there’s nothing else that he can say, nothing else he can do. So he lets go, lets Gavin slump against the wall and lets himself step back.

He should tell Gavin that he hates him, because at that moment, with all that rage and bitterness curling within him, he thinks he really does. But he can’t do that either. And maybe Barbara is right, maybe he just lets things happen to him. Like the way he allowed Gavin to pull this shit, last night and again today, without retribution. At the same time though, Michael would rather die than come out the other end of this fucked up mess as the bad guy. He doesn’t want to be the victim either, because he’s just as much at fault for all of this as Gavin, if not more so.

So he steps back, takes a deep breath, and walks away. And maybe that’s a method of making things happen, too.

Michael’s halfway down the block before he even knows what he’s doing, and the only reason he stops is because there’s suddenly a hand on his arm. He almost swings around at full force, prepared to yell the head off of whoever has the gall to stop him, Gavin, Barbara, whoever, he’s just done. He doesn’t care anymore, and he has every intention of telling them that.

The words die in his throat as he whirls around and accidentally head butts the other person. He swears, clutching at his forehead as he glances up and is startled to find sea-blue eyes looking back at him.

“Jesus, remind me to never try and sneak up on you again,” Lindsay smiles, rubbing at her head with nothing but mirth in her gaze.

Michael doesn’t respond. He knows he must be staring, must look terrible, like some kinda half brain dead zombie shuffling down the street at eleven at night. He definitely feels that way. Thoughts are not something he’s capable of processing right now, they’re muddled between reality and emotion and if he could he would just shut down entirely. In his opinion, being a zombie might not be that bad.

“Are you okay?” Lindsay asks when Michael still says nothing.

 _Do I look okay?_ he thinks, the words swallowed down as Lindsay comes forward to cup his face in her hands. Of course he’s not okay. In fact, maybe he’s never been okay. Between insecurities at home and the pickle with Ray and all this crap with Gavin, he can’t really remember the last time he’s been okay.

Unperturbed by the silence that meets her question, Lindsay continues. “The minibar at the place I’m staying at is stuffed full of ice cream novelties.”

At first, Michael doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about. Why should he care if she has fucking ice cream in her hotel room? Is she saying it like it’s a good thing or a bad thing? Is it some sort of issue she needs help with? Like maybe she needs a coconspirator that will help her eat all the ice cream and . . . _Oh_.

“Yeah?” Michael replies, slowly as though he’s testing out his own voice. It wavers uncomfortably in his throat and he tries not to wince at how pathetic he must sound.

Lindsay either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care, her hands sliding down to his shoulders, over his arms, his wrists, until she has his hands wrapped tight inside of hers. “Yeah. I’d get sick if I tried to eat it all alone. Wanna help?”

“Sure.” The smile that works its way across Michael’s lips is sincere, but he knows it probably looks twisted, strained at the seams like every inch of him feels. He smiles anyways. “That’d be great.”

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

If it weren’t for the fact that his phone is literally stuck to his cheek with drool, Michael’s not sure he would have noticed it vibrating and woken up. As it is, the thing buzzes for almost half a minute before Michael comes to enough to open his eyes and press the answer button flashing on the touch screen. “Fuuu-whaaaaa?” he groans into the receiver. Jesus Christ, what time is it? From the intensity of the light streaming through the hotel blinds Michael guesses it can’t be far past the ass-crack of dawn.

“Oh, I’m sorry, did I wake you from the alcohol induced coma that surely must have kept you from calling these past few days?”

Michael immediately sits up, fumbling with the blankets as he realizes he’s only garbed in his boxers. “Fuck, sorry. Sorry,” he says quickly as he leans back against the headboard, one hand fisting in his hair. “I meant to, Geoff, I really did. I’ve just been kinda busy.”

“Well Mr. Busy better also be being Mr. Safe Sex, Griffon will have kittens if you come back with an STD or worse, a kid.”

Sputtering, Michael hisses, “I am not-”

“I don’t care what you do,” Geoff interrupts, “As long as it doesn’t involve addictive and dangerous drugs, drunk driving, or forgetting to glove during love.”

“No one says that. No one ever says that. And if you say it again I’ll throw myself out the nearest window,” Michael warns. Geoff just laughs in his ear, and Michael can’t help the little smile that tugs at the corners of his mouth. “Anyways, to what do I owe this lovely wakeup call?”

There’s a pause in which Michael assumes Geoff is checking his watch, confirmed when Geoff comes back with, “Dude, it’s like eight here, which means it’s after noon there. It’s not morning. Did you seriously just wake up?”

“Late night,” Michael says, which is actually true. The last time he’d looked at the clock before passing out it had been nearly four in the morning.

“Don’t get too crazy,” Geoff chides, “Or we’ll start to worry.” His tone is joking, stilted with a chuckle, but Michael can hear the subtle seriousness behind it. It sends a raw, uncomfortable pang of guilt through his gut. “Anyways,” Geoff continues, “We got those pictures you emailed us. Fucking epic stuff, kid! The ones from the museum were a little skewed but all the ones of the buildings? Wow! I didn’t know you were so talented with a camera!”

Michael jolts, legs drawing up to his chest and his free arm moving to encircle them. “Y-you think so? You’re not just saying that cause you’re supposed to or something?”

Geoff huffs as if insulted, “What? Of course not. I’m not gonna lead my kid on by being a dickhead and letting him believe he’s good at something he’s not. That’s the kind of shit that leads to those hilariously bad _American Idol_ auditions. I seriously think they’re good. Take some more, okay? Griffon wants to make a collage of them on that new glass coffee table she’s constructing.”

“Yeah?”

“Mmmhmm, and of course we’ll frame a couple of the best ones for the baby’s room like you asked.”

And really, Michael doesn’t know what to say. Whenever Geoff sounds so sincere like that (which to be honest is most of the time), Michael clams up, short of breath and words in the face of such clear praise and affection. “I . . . Thanks,” he manages to mutter after a heartbeat.

“Anytime,” Geoff hums. “I’ll wrap this up then, Mr. Busy, let you get back to whatever the fuck you’re up to. Just remember to give us a call every now and then, we worry, you know.”

“I know,” Michael whispers.

“Love ya, kid.”

There’s a click, and Michael’s left holding a silent phone against his ear, his reply, as usual, unspoken on his lips. When he was younger he used to pull a Star Wars and just respond with a stiff, “I know.” And he does know, he really does, it’s just . . . It feels weird to say it back. He doesn’t even fucking call them mom and dad, and hasn’t in the entire eleven years he’s lived with them.

Pushing that uncomfortable train of thought aside, Michael sets his phone down on the nightstand and exchanges it for his camera, turning to look at the part of the room he was pointedly ignoring during the entire phone call.

Lindsay curls up like a cat when she sleeps, almost completely buried beneath the blankets that are pulled all the way up to her nose. The sunlight leaking into the room splashes across the bed at just the right angle that it would hit her eyes were it not for the fact that her face is pressed against Michael’s side, fingers tangled into the hem of his t-shirt. The temptation to run his hands through her hair is too strong to ignore, and he twists a few locks around his pinkie and watches them catch the sun.

Despite the fact that Lindsay is just as scantily clad as he is, sporting nothing but a shirt and panties beneath the covers, nothing happened between them the night before other than what had been promised on the street. There’s drips of ice cream on the pair of them, and Michael’s annoyed to find some strawberry sherbet dried on his arm. Shit happens when ice cream feasts dissolve into ice cream battles. He didn’t even know they sold Push Ups on this side of the Atlantic. There’s a bit of chocolate stuck in Lindsay’s hair, too, and Michael begins to carefully brush it out with his fingers, quickly becoming absorbed in the soothing mindlessness of the task.

It isn’t until Lindsay drags a fingernail down a strip of showing skin along his hip that he realizes he’s woken her, and he jumps a little. “Jesus fuck,” he snaps, “You just about gave me a heart attack!”

She laughs and rolls over, languidly stretching and allowing the sheets to fall to pool around her waist. “You’re such a baby,” she yawns, ignoring Michael’s answering scowl. When he doesn’t give a verbal response, she rolls over onto her stomach, propping her head up on her arms and casting him a coy smile, “What’s the camera for? You weren’t taking pervy pictures of me in my sleep, were you?”

Michael blinks. He’d forgotten he’d picked up the camera from the nightstand a few minutes ago, the strap of it wrapped around his wrist feeling so natural he’d barely noticed he’d done it. “Ah, no,” he says, “Just picked it up actually.” Rolling it over in his hands, he considers the object, the gaudiness of the red finish and the already scuffed surface of the LCD panel that looks as if he’s had the thing for years rather than days. It’s a cheap camera, but something about it excites him for some reason. “Maybe I will, though,” he threatens playfully, turning the lens towards Lindsay.

She pulls a pillow over her face, “Hell no you won’t! I just woke up! I’m a mess and I have chocolate in my hair, as you already know!” There isn’t even a moment of forethought or hesitation in Michael’s mind before he pounces on her, grinning when he earns a shriek of a giggle for his actions. “Michael! No!” Lindsay laughs as he snatches the pillow away and snaps one clear shot of her face in all of its open-mouthed, closed-eyes glory of mirth. “I will burn that camera! I swear to god!” She takes up another pillow, and Michael ducks as she attempts to bap him over the head with it.

With how long cameras have been around, and how many exist in the world today, Michael wonders why lives aren’t documented in pictures. Sure, people have pictures of their lives, snapshots of birthday parties and family outings and all that useless shit no one cares about. If people had cameras in their hands all the time, they surely wouldn’t bother to capture and preserve such mundane things as that. They’d pick the rare moments, the beginnings and the endings and the important bits in between that they never wanted to forget. Birthdays and parties aren’t important, they’re just markers for the passage of time. If it were up to Michael, only the best things would be celebrated and contained in pictures.

And were his life to be laid out in a photo album, it would be empty for the first seven years. The first image would be of the evening the social worker had let him stay the night so that he could meet the latest set of prospective parents. He’d aim the camera at the second when he’d caught sight of Geoff’s tattoos peeking out beneath long, plaid sleeves and tentatively reached up to touch them. The shutter would click when Geoff crouched down and whispered, “Hey, you like tattoos buddy?” and let Michael lay an awed hand on the ink.

He’d capture the look on his own face when Griffon carried him into his bedroom for the first time, just to see the way his eyes widened and his jaw dropped as she laughed, “I hope you’re a fan of green, we couldn’t agree on any other color to paint the walls,” near his ear. There’d be picture of the scribbles Ray had lined the hallway wall with the day they’d met, and of the soapy bucket of water Geoff had given the pair of them to clean it. And he’d devote at least two pages to the mess the two of them had made of the kitchen when they tried to make Griffon and Ray’s mom pancakes for Mother’s Day. While he’d leave out trivial things like Elementary graduations and first days of school, he’d make sure to snap images of the comings home; the ice cream outings that followed those occasions, the tired slump of he and Ray over the arms of the couch after long hours at school, Geoff lifting them up on his shoulders after they’d won the middle school science fair with a shitty maze they’d tortured Ray’s hamster with. At some point he’d set aside a space for trying to capture the impossible to recall things, the moments that have blurred in his mind because they blended in too well with the rest of his life to stand out at first glance. Like Geoff doing homework with him at the kitchen table, ever patient despite Michael never being the best student, or the nights Griffon let him help with dinner, teaching him how to tell when the meat was done and the right way to whisk the lumps out of the batter. He’d try to get a picture of the first time his heart had fluttered painfully in his chest, despite the fact that such nonsense wouldn’t show up in a photograph. That’s one of the hard to remember things though, so there’d be a few, silly little snapshots of seemingly mundane moments of he and Ray walking home from school, playing videogames, and laying on Ray’s bedroom floor with a stack of comic books on hot summer days.

Were Michael to try and tell the story of his life in pictures, he thinks he might leave out some of the more recent happenings, the ones that leave him uneasy about the future. Most of high school was an annoyance, though maybe he’d take a quick snap of the time he and Ray both got ditched by their dates for junior prom and ended up ruining their suits by running around in the snow in Central Park. Graduation is out of the question, as is the day after, when Michael had sat on the living room sofa fiddling with the strings of his hoodie while Geoff and Griffon had announced their good news that had filled him with nothing but dread.

He’d take a picture of himself flipping open the guidebook on the plane, moments before he’d speak to Barbara for the first time, and one of the sky that had ripped open with rain the moment they’d landed. And he’d definitely take one of that god damn double-decker bus, all the trauma it caused aside.

As for this moment, Michael would make sure to have an entire page dedicated to it. If his life were told in pictures, he’d like be able to flip backwards to the photographs of the way Lindsay laughs, head ducked as she swings the pillow at his face and knocks him back onto the mattress, and of how she flips their positions and pins his wrists to his sides and snatches the camera from his hands to catch an image of him trying to hide his face against the rumpled blankets while the too-bright flash goes off. Of the moments after, Michael thinks he’d leave mostly up to memory.

It’s unexpected, the casual brush of Lindsay’s fingers up his arms, the response of tilting his head back up to look at her just in time to catch her lips against his when she leans down, it’s honestly all a surprise. The previous night they’d eaten ice cream and flicked bits of it at each other while they read jokes off the sticks. Michael doesn’t even remember the part where they finally collapsed and fell asleep (magically sans pants, apparently). So this is new. This is really new.

And it’s not as though he doesn’t like it either. He willingly deepens the kiss, lets her settle against him and trace the outline of his tattoos with her nails. When he finally lifts his own hands up from where they rest against the mattress, the skin of his wrists still warm where she’d previously pinned them, he doesn’t hesitate to tease at the edge of her t-shirt, to slowly push it up and skim the palms of his hands down her body from ribs to stomach and up again. Lindsay isn’t wearing a bra, but Michael’s careful not to encroach on any territory he doesn’t have permission to, content to settle his hands against the small of her back instead while she curls his fingers into his hair.

He’s utterly breathless when she finally pulls back, cheeks flushed and chest heaving as she quirks her lips into a smile and leans her forehead against his. “I like you a lot,” she says, and Michael hears the same careful uncertainty in her voice that he feels within himself.

“Yeah,” he murmurs, “I could tell.”

She puffs out a fond breath and kisses him again, brief and chaste, “You’re supposed to say you like me too, idiot.”

“Oh, I do,” he says, slowly as though he’s treading unknown, untested waters. “I was waiting for the ‘but.’”

Though her smile never falters, the light in her eyes changes just a little, turns almost wistful. “But I don’t want it to be anything more than this,” she says after a pause.

Part of Michael wants to say no, to convince her of all the great things that might come of being anything and everything more. In the end, he squashes that part of him down, stuffs it away in a box of wishful thinkings at the back of his mind. “I’m okay with this,” he says instead, because he understands, perhaps more than Lindsay thinks he does. He knows what it’s like to want the comfort of a person, the allowance to pretend that just for now they’re the only people in the world while still having the ability to leave, to return to reality at any point. It’s simple, easy in a fantastical sort of way, and he’s fine with that.

They can be okay with “this,” whatever it is, pretending to exist in their own little pocket of space and time where the weight of the world can’t intrude to rest on their shoulders.

Though they stay there the rest of the day, ignoring texts from their friends and the rush of noise from the city outside, they don’t really do anything. Lindsay falls back asleep at some point, curled into the curve of Michael’s arm while he flips through channels on the hotel TV. They order a room service dinner when she wakes up, arguing over how to split the bill before the stumble across a credit card Miles left behind and snicker to themselves while reciting the number over the phone. They take separate showers, though Michael sits on the counter while Lindsay takes hers, still in his boxers and t-shirt, while he confesses all that occurred two nights ago in the hotel room she and her friends had been absent from. She listens over the running water and after he takes his, towels his hair dry while he perches on the end of the bed, head bowed so that Lindsay can’t see the frustrated tears that well in his eyes when she whispers that he deserved so much better. Michael kisses her during another round of minifridge ice cream, savoring the taste of artificially flavored sherbet on her lips while she pushes him backwards onto the carpet.

They lay there, unwilling to move to the bed while a muted rerun of old American cartoons plays on some channel. Michael stays quiet while she murmurs her every thought in his ear while it passes through her mind. He listens to stories of her growing up with Miles, of her family cats she misses already, and he draws circles across her back while her voice cracks around the edges of Barbara’s name when she readily shares all the unspoken secrets that Barbara had refused to tell him. She insists doesn’t regret their decision though, the choice to not get involved lest things got too serious, but Michael suspects it’s a little too late for that, and has been since Barbara whisked her off the dance floor.

At some point, he tells her about last night, about the minutes before she found him wandering down the sidewalk. He keeps his eyes closed through it, content to trap himself in darkness while he recounts the way his anger had dulled to the point where he no longer recognized the emotion it had become. “Anguish,” she says against the shell of his ear, fingers dancing across his sternum in time with his heart, and Michael wishes he could tattoo that word in his veins with how painfully true it rings.

And just like before, there’s no spark. He waits for it this time though, halfway expects it when Lindsay spends the space between the floor and the bed peppering his face with kisses and laughing against his skin, but it never comes. And just like before, he relishes in Lindsay’s warmth instead, more than content with what he has rather than what he lacks.

There’s something equally mesmerizing about falling in love with someone platonically, Michael discovers as they settle beneath the covers together, Lindsay wordlessly molding his hands into church, steeple, doors, people, over and over again like lullaby for the mute. If Michael were to tell the story of his life with pictures, he would take one of this room and the way the shadows stretch across the mattress over the two bodies nestled upon it. Such a photograph would seem trivial to the outside observer because it would miss all the important things, the things Michael will never ever share with anybody else. It won’t show the gentle way Lindsay cups his face in her hands, the tangle of their legs beneath the sheets, or how she kisses first the corners of his eyes and then his lips as she waits for him to say what he’ll never tell anyone else, not Geoff or Ray or even Barbara, and certainly not Gavin.

“I’m worthless, you know,” Michael whispers so softly he barely even hears himself. “A worthless kid, a worthless friend, and apparently a worthless fuckbuddy, too.” The laugh that escapes him is bitter, broken around the lump in his throat.

“You’re not,” Lindsay says, and for the first time in his life, Michael believes it.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

It’s just half past five the morning when Lindsay sits up in bed. Michael cracks open an eye, woken by the shift of the mattress beside him and the casual way she wiggles out from underneath his arm. “Wussup?” he asks blearily.

The god damn sun isn’t even pinkening the sky yet, and Lindsay looks as if she’s ready to take on the world. And that’s an accurate statement, because the next thing Michael knows she’s jumping out of bed and practically skipping towards the bathroom. “I just got the best idea!” she calls back to him. Michael groans and smashes his face down into his pillow, willing himself back to sleep over the sounds of Lindsay knocking stuff around in the bathroom. He’s halfway back to Snooze Ville when he hears her shout a triumphant, “Aha!” even a cartoon character would be jealous of, and she comes barreling back into the room to take a flying leap that lands right on top of him.

“Jesus Christ!” Michael huffs, the majority of the air in his lungs having abandoned him upon impact. “If people keep doing this to me I might actually die, you know!” Lindsay just quirks an eyebrow at him. Once Michael’s done wheezing his way back to the land of the living he props himself up on his elbows to stare at the small box Lindsay’s got clutched between her hands. “Oh, no,” he says quickly, “No way, not happening.”

Lindsay’s smile stretches to a Cheshire Cat level grin and brandishes the box in his face. “It’ll look great on you. Ginger is totally your color, I should know.”

“You should- You’re not even a real redhead!” Michael snaps. He makes an attempt to dislodge her so he can escape, but to his horror finds himself thoroughly pinned.

“And you won’t be either,” Lindsay giggles.

Which is how Michael finds himself sitting on the side of the bathtub a half hour later, now empty box of red hair dye in his hands while Lindsay studiously folds bits of tinfoil around his entire head. “I look like the lost member of Daft Punk,” he mutters when he catches sight of himself in the mirror above the sink. “I can’t believe I’m letting you do this to me.”

Lindsay hums as she finishes folding the last locks of his hair up in a square of tinfoil. “You’ll thank me later,” she says matter-of-factly. Michael lets out a disagreeing grumble.

The phone rings while Michael’s somberly examining the mess his t-shirt has become, absorbed in the motley patterns of ice cream and vibrant hair dye that he knows will probably never come out. Fucking fantastic. He barely even notices Lindsay’s cell phone playing an obnoxious chorus of, “But I would walk five hundred miles! And I would walk five hundred more!” until she actually answers it.

“Sup, Miles?” she greets, and Michael smacks his palm to his face, not even caring that he’s probably smearing dye down his nose. Jesus fucking fishsticks, of course she gave that ringtone to Miles. Clearly her and Barbara are freaking bad-pun soul mates, for fuck’s sake. Lindsay doesn’t miss his aggravation, and gives Michael a cheeky wave from where she’s perched on the counter.

Michael returns to staring at his disaster of a shirt while Lindsay makes a bunch of non-verbal noises of the type that only the best and most long-term friends use as a means of communication. They range from anywhere between an interested “hmm,” an excited, “ah!” and a noncommittal, “meh,” all of which are completely undecipherable from Michael’s point of view. When she finally hangs up with a rather foreboding, “Coolio! See you soon!” he keeps his eyes averted and fixed studiously on a particularly toxic-shade of blue splotched on his shirt. The shit actually looks mildly radioactive, and he can’t remember for the life of him what the hell flavor of ice cream had spawned it.

“Guess what?” Lindsay announces in a sing-song tone, sliding off the counter and bouncing on her heels in front of him like an excited puppy. It’s enough to make Michael hesitantly lift his gaze, still wary but drawn in by her good mood. “We’re going to the beach!”

Michael narrows his eyes, his suspicions returning. He may not have been able to understand the weird gibberish sounds Lindsay had used to communicate with Miles, but he wasn’t stupid to misinterpret the not-so-discrete glances she’d thrown his way. “Who all is included in this royal ‘we?’” he asks warily.

“Ah, you know,” Lindsay twiddles her fingers while she talks, “Just Miles and Kerry and Monty, and Barbara, and you, and me, and Gavin . . .”

A snort escapes him, and Michael folds his arms over his chest, “Fuck that, count me out.”

“But-”

“But nothing!” Michael snaps, “Did you miss the part where I’ve been hiding out in this friggen room since the night before last, very clearly avoiding that dickhead? Because I sure didn’t.”

The frown Lindsay directs at him is far more intimidating than it should be, and Michael gives himself a mental pat on the back for not flinching in the face of it. “Michael Butthead Jones,” she says lowly, and Michael barely refrains from interrupting to tell her that his middle name is most certainly not “Butthead,” thank you very fucking much. “You have been allowed your period of sulking and now it’s time for you to climb back on the horse-”

“The fuck I won’t,” Michael protests immediately. “That horse can go screw himself!”

“-It’s time for you to climb back on the horse,” Lindsay reiterates, “Sexual innuendoes aside, and stop being a whiney baby! If the entire world went around trying to avoid their exes and hookups the way you do we’d all have to live as hermits in the middle of the fucking woods! Now sit still while I finish your hair, then we’re going to get dressed and go without you pitching a fucking bitch tent!”

Michael stares at her, too aghast at the intensity of the outburst to protest as she resumes her position beside him on the side of the tub and begins to release his curls from the tinfoil. After a minute or two of stunned silence, he mutters, “You’re going to scare the bejeezus out of your kids someday.”

Lindsay grins.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Meeting Monty again does very little to deter Michael’s theories about the dude being some kinda crazy mafia leader or secret agent or whatever. Although it does allow him to add _motherfucking superhero_ to the growing list of possibilities, because Monty’s house turns out to seriously be something out of freakin’ _Iron Man_. And that’s just from seeing the outside of it.

Everyone else arrives long before them it seems, because they’re all looking a little impatient when Lindsay and Michael exit their cab. “‘Bout time,” Gavin grumbles, hands tucked into his pockets and his posture oddly stiff. It’s a little startling, really, to see the usually happy-go-lucky Gavin Free seem so grumpy and put off by being forced into a trip to the shore. Michael can’t help but feel a little giddy with smug satisfaction at the sight. He’s not above being petty. Such glee quickly fades when Gavin’s gaze shifts to give Michael a once-over that can’t be missed. “What the smeg did you do to your hair?”

The genuine bemusement in Gavin’s voice, edged with a hint of concern, makes Michael pause, though just for a moment. “Uh, Lindsay did it. No amount of protests could have spared me.” He’s vaguely aware that no one else seems to be talking other than the two of them, as if the rest of the rag-tag group of teenagers (and, uh, whatever the fuck Monty is) are all too eager to watch this disaster unfold. Michael swallows.  
“Looks weird,” Gavin scoffs. His eyes shift to Michael’s shirt. “And you’re wearing a girl’s shirt _again_?”

Michael knows the flush that spreads across his face is probably an ungodly shade of crimson, but he tries to ignore that, fingers fisting in the hem of the Grumpy Care Bear shirt Lindsay had insisted he wear since his own t-shirt had been utterly unsalvageable. “What the fuck do you care?” he bites out before he can stop himself, “You know for someone who isn’t at all into dudes, you sure do give an ungodly amount of fucks about what they wear.” He hears Lindsay choke on a laugh and Barbara literally choke, dropping the bottle she’d had to her lips and spitting water everywhere. “Also,” Michael adds, emboldened by his friends’ reactions, “You seemed to like girl-cut shirts when you were sliding your hands up under it on the dance floor.”

Gavin’s expression is pure ice, and Michael meets it head on, unwavering. Before either of them can make things worse however, hands clad in leather, fingerless gloves alight on both their shoulders. Michael jolts at the touch, jerking his head to the side to see Monty calmly staring the pair of them down. And he’s just as fucking weird as Michael remembers. His dark hair has once again been covered up by a wig, today’s selection a shocking shade of blue that’s spiky style is reminiscent of Final Fantasy, matched with a purple button up, black vest, and pair of dark violet jeans so tight Dick Grayson would be jealous. He’s every bit a real-life anime character as Michael remembers. “Cute as this is, I’d like to get to the beach sometime today,” Monty says in the same even monotone that Michael was acquainted with from the first and only other time they’d spoken. “Do either of you know how to use a bike?”

The intonation over the word “bike” clues Michael in much faster than Gavin, who just sputters uselessly. “A motorcycle? I had a license back home, but I don’t know how good that’d be here, dude.”

Monty shrugs dismissively, “Don’t worry about it, you won’t get pulled over.” His wrist twitches, and Michael gasps as a set of keys sails towards him, barely catching them before they smack him in the face. “You’re with Gavin then.”

Wait, what? No. No way.

Michael spins around to glare furiously at Lindsay and Barbara, who not-so-discretely grimace and try and look at anything other than him. “You!”

Barbara lifts her hands apologetically, “Look, Michael, out of the seven of us, only you, Lindsay, and Monty have motorcycle experience. I’ll switch with Gav if you want, but I mean do you really want him riding behind Lindsay?” Apparently he doesn’t need to give a verbal response to that absurd question, because the horrified look on his face must speak a thousand words. “Exactly,” Barbara smiles. “Besides, the drive isn’t that long. It’ll be over before you know it.”

“It’s nearly an hour!” Gavin bursts out, “That’s not short at all!”

“Your concept of driving time is skewed because of how dinky your country is,” Barbara deadpans.

Gavin frowns as though he actually believes that, and Michael rolls his eyes. “She’s fucking with you, dibshit, it’s totally a long time. In fact, it’s long enough that if you start whining about how long it is or even whisper ‘are we there yet’ once on the way, I will push your ass off the bike so fast the asphalt won’t even have time to give you road rash because you’ll be obliterated upon impact. Got it?”

One disgruntled muttering session later, and Michael’s straddling one of Monty’s very nice, very expensive looking and weirdly not name-brand bikes. He doesn’t give a shit what brand it is though once he starts it, the engine rumbling into life so silkily that it makes him shiver with delight. “Holy crapoli, where did you get this sweetness?” Michael’s practically bouncing on his seat in delight. This is way better than Geoff’s old motorcycle, hell it feels smoother than even the high-end Harley’s Michael had once tested at a dealership.

“Made it,” Monty says from atop his own, equally impressive bike (though its luster is admittedly dimmed a bit with Kerry’s sitting in a buggy hooked up to the side of it, and Miles perched on the back with his arms behind him in a pose purposefully reminiscent of a pinup girl). “Made all of them, actually. I didn’t really like ones I saw at the dealership so I decided I could craft a better one. Or three.”

Christ, he really is Tony Stark.

Michael turns his attention to where Gavin’s hovering a few feet away, watching them all get situated and ready to go with an apprehensive expression. “How do you know they’re regulation safe if you made them yourself?” he asks.

Monty gives a noncommittal shrug, “They’re fine. Just wear a helmet.” On cue, he hands one over to Michael and underhands another to Gavin.

“Don’t be a baby about it,” Michael chides. Fuck, Monty even has cool helmets, too, each set given to them bearing matching paint jobs to the bikes themselves. Now this is class. “Get on or get out.”

Gavin looks like he has half a mind to take Michael up on that offer to back out, but instead resolutely pops the helmet over his head and scrambles up onto the bike behind Michael. It’s not as though the thing is small, either, a model that’s meant to bear the load of a single person and force a second rider to balance precariously on the end. The motorcycle has a wide, long seat with room enough to spare. Despite this, Gavin scoots up right up against Michael’s back, hands clenching along Michael’s waist.

Whoa, okay, holy fuck, unexpected intimate contact. Michael tries to stifle the hitch of breath that escapes him, the noise luckily muffled beneath the thick helmet. So absorbed is he in the stream of, “ _Shit shit shit shit shit_ ,” running through his mind, that Michael barely notices Monty and Lindsay revving up and peeling out of the driveway until he hears Miles whoop.

“Fuck,” he grits out, and lifts his feet up to take off after them, ignoring Gavin’s high, hiccup of a squeal.

The heat of Gavin’s hands on him is hard to get used to, even with the wind rushing past them fast enough to chill the skin. As much as Michael would like to convince himself that he’s over it, that he doesn’t give a fuck about Gavin, every god damn shift of Gavin’s fingers across his hips sends a spark through him that clearly says otherwise. It irritates him beyond belief that he’s still so affected by it all. He shouldn’t be, he really shouldn’t, he has no reason to carry on mooning over a dickhead like Gavin. And there is so much more to this trip than Gavin, too. He has Barbara, and Lindsay, and sort of Miles and Kerry and Monty. He has all these people he should logically be focusing more attention on than Gavin fucking Free. And yet here he is, distracted by the hesitant ghost of Gavin’s fingers along his sides.

They take a sharp turn, Michael still bringing up the rear of their hodge-podge motorcycle brigade, and Gavin lurches dangerously to the side with a squeal. Michael instinctively reaches back, blocking Gavin from any intimate face-to-street contact. “Will you just hang on already and quit waffling around?” Michael snaps as he rights Gavin on the seat one-handed, eyes never leaving the road. “Holding on to the driver isn’t going to bruise your manly fucking pride anymore than rubbing dicks with me is.”

He can actually feel Gavin tense behind him, feel the walls go up despite the fact that they never really went down. “When are you going to drop that?” Gavin asks above the wind, actually having the gall to loosen his hold on Michael rather than tighten it.

“Uh, I don’t know,” Michael says lowly, one hand still craned back to keep Gavin from toppling off the bike in his supreme stupidity. “Maybe when I get over the fact that you fucking used me like a blow-up-doll. Which will be never, by the way.”

Gavin tenses impossibly further, hands completely leaving Michael’s sides now. “I didn’t do that.”

“Look, seriously, I don’t care what you think you did or didn’t do,” Michael grits out. Up ahead Monty and Lindsay are weaving their bikes through a foreboding slew of traffic. “But if you don’t get your shit together right the hell now and hold on I’m not sure even that helmet will save you.”

He snags his fingers into Gavin’s shirt and tugs, forcing the other boy to fall forward against him with a shocked, “Eep!” hands scrabbling across Michael’s stomach before his arms loop securely around him and his head thunks down between Michael’s shoulder blades. Michael can feel him shaking as he maneuvers between cars, small waves of trembles that reverberate into his own body. And after a moment, his half zoned out mind trying to focus on staying in the left hand lane registers that he can feel Gavin’s heartbeat, too. It echoes into his own ribs, so similar in erratic beat to his own that it’s a wonder Michael noticed it at all. Gavin must realize likeness too, because not a second later Michael notes the nervous clench of fingers in the fabric of his shirt.

What the actual fuck.

He needs to say something here, anything really, it doesn’t matter what, just something. The urge to speak pulls at him like a desperate siren song. There are a thousand questions on the tip of his tongue and no courage with which to say them. He’s already tried confronting Gavin on this whole mess once, and the results had been depressingly abysmal, even for Michael. What would trying again change? Nothing.

So he keeps his mouth shut, ignores the rabbit-like thrum of Gavin’s heart against his back, and keeps his eyes fixed on the road ahead.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

The best thing about letting Lindsay dye his hair that morning is that Michael has an excuse not to go swimming. It’s not that he can’t, or even doesn’t like swimming. On the contrary he’s the one who has the tendency to drag Ray to the closest indoor pool back home even in the dead of winter. So swimming is fine, it’s just that he has better things to occupy his time with today. Like taking pictures. Geoff’s praise is still bouncing around in his head, niggling at his thoughts and urging him to see test the limits of the talents his guardian has proclaimed he has.

Plus, he really likes watching everyone else.

Barbara and Lindsay are, surprisingly, the first in the water, giggling and screeching as they wade into the cold depths before Lindsay says “Fuck it!” and jumps on Barbara, dunking them both under the waves. They emerge gasping seconds later, swearing as they splash each other until they’re both sputtering and rubbing salt water out of their eyes. “Sneaky Canadian cheat,” Lindsay laughs when Barbara aims an underwater kick at her. “And I thought you guys were supposed to be nice!”

In contrast Miles and Kerry spend a good half hour on the beach trying and failing to get Monty to go swimming with them, and finding that the dude does a very good impression of a boulder when pulled on. They whine and wail to the point where Michael begins to contemplate drowning himself in the sea. Monty however saves him just in time by making the idiot duo shut up with a soft, “I’ll have just as much fun watching you from here, I promise.” And ugh, gross, it’s so weirdly sincere that Miles and Kerry buy it, their eyes lighting up like fucking Christmas and all that cliché hooplah. From where Michael’s sitting, it’s absolutely nauseating. “Go play,” Monty urges with a flick of his hands towards the waiting, wave-washed shore.

“Are you sure?” Kerry asks, though his hesitation is clearly waning.

“Mmhhmm,” Monty hums. “Have fun. Be cute. Maybe I’ll wade in the shallows with you guys in a bit.”

And that’s that, because without further ado Miles and Kerry dash off towards the water whooping and hollering like idiots. Michael sighs and casts Monty a glance where they’re sitting together on towels spread out across the sand. “Are you really going to go wading with them?” With the outfit Monty’s garbed in, wig and all, he finds it highly unlikely.

“Maybe. I’ll need an umbrella first, though. Do you think they sell them at one of those shops we passed on the way here?” He turns to look they way they’d come down the shore, up towards where the faintest blur of grass can be seen.

“You going to hold it over your head like a delicate flower that might wilt in the sun or something?” Michael huffs.

Monty tips his sunglasses down the bridge of his nose just enough so that he can level Michael with a glare. “Yes.”

Well okay then.

Gavin is the odd duck out it seems. He lingers on the sand with Michael and Monty for a bit, standing rather than sitting with them, but he doesn’t make any move towards the water until he catches sight of the narrow-eyed look Michael has been pointing his direction. After that he waddles off like a one-legged duck, awkwardly tripping towards the water until Barbara and Miles grab him by the wrists and swing him into the waves head first.

That’s the first picture Michael takes. He shades the image of Gavin’s feet sticking out of the water and Miles and Barbara doubled over with laughter to show it to Monty, who shakes his head and lets the smallest, quirk of a smile show.

After that Michael looses track. There’s pictures of the sandcastle Barbara and Lindsay build, and pictures of Kerry covered in sand shaped to look like the body of a mermaid, curtsey of Miles. He takes a dozen or so pictures of Lindsay and Barbara as they chase each other in and out of the water, fascinated by the waves washing away their footprints and leaving smooth sand behind as though they were never there. He stands a ways back, so far that his subjects lose their distinguishable features, and takes pictures of Monty, Kerry, and Miles wading in the shallows, up and down the beach as Monty promised, newly purchased umbrella in hand. Lindsay makes him take pictures of the messages she and Barbara trace out in the sand, and steals the camera from him in order to push him into the water. It’s not deep enough that his hair gets wet, in fact it barely laps across his ankles. Michael pretends to be mad anyways, and chases her up the shore until he snags the camera back and takes a picture of her shocked expression.

It’s only just past mid day when he starts to nod off, splayed out on his stomach with his head and his camera resting on his folded arms. The sun doesn’t help matters, comfortingly warm and only serving to lull him further towards sleep. It’s only because he hears a telltale, muffled squawk and a crash of a body falling into the sand that Michael realizes Gavin’s appeared to invade his space. Goodie. He doesn’t bother to crack open an eye and confirm, stubbornly feigning slumber as the cool shade of Gavin’s shadow settles over him. From the sound of it Gavin has chosen to sit on Monty’s vacant towel, the man of mystery having vanished in his wade/walk with the boys out of sight up the shore a half hour before, and the rest of them tactfully choosing not to see where they’d disappeared to.

Whether or not Gavin’s fallen for Michael’s sleeping act, a heavy silence lingers as soon as he plops down. Michael doesn’t dare chance a glance for a good five minutes, and when he does crack an eye open he takes in the sight of Gavin sitting barely over a foot away, knees pulled up to his chest and his arms hugged around them. His gaze is trained towards the ocean, and from the giggling he can hear Michael surmises that the girls have probably returned to play-fighting in the water. When he tries to subtly catch a glimpse for himself though, a slight twist of his head, Gavin glances his direction and Michael studiously scrunches his eyes shut again.

Sleep, sleep, sleeping. He is sleeping and Gavin can sit in uncomfortable silence forever for all he cares.

Actually falling asleep is a complete accident, and Michael doesn’t realize he has until he finds himself blinking his eyes back open to a whole new level of light, and the sight of Monty’s umbrella popped up in the sand overhead. It takes him a moment to comprehend everything, the towel he’s laying on, the sand beneath it, the umbrella that’s magically appeared and . . . And Gavin.

Gavin’s sitting where he was when Michael last looked, but his posture is more lax. His legs are stretched out in front of him, toes buried in the cool sand, and his arms are angled behind him, supporting most of his weight so that his upper body twists just so, ever so slightly facing Michael’s direction. Michael bleary turns his gaze upward, and starts as he realizes Gavin’s looking right at him. A high flush blooms rapidly across Gavin’s cheeks as Michael makes eye contact with him.

“S-sorry!” he stammers out, quickly turning away.

Michael raises an eyebrow in confusion. Had Gavin been watching him sleep? No, no way, he couldn’t have been out more than ten, maybe fifteen minutes. And Gavin’s a dick, so regardless, that’s just not possible. He sighs, sitting up and looping his arms over his head in a languid stretch. “Not sure what you’re apologizing for,” he mutters.

Gavin has his chin propped up with a hand, his elbow resting on his knees as he keeps his eyes averted. “I . . . IwasstaringandI’msorry,” he mumbles into his palm.

“What?”

“I was staring,” Gavin enunciates this time, tone degrading towards annoyed and defensive again, “And I’m sorry.”

“Oh.”

And, okay, that’s super weird. But Michael doesn’t dare look into it, it would be pointless to do so. Gavin’s already declared his stance and he seems to be sticking to it, and that’s that.

The relapse of silence rings heavy in Michael’s ears, beginning to make him feel self conscious as he’s left to think of all the terrible reasons Gavin would have been staring at him, if the guy says his sexual preferences are as he claims. He tries to quietly check himself over, looking for weird moles or patches of sunburn where he fucked up his sunscreen. Maybe Lindsay wrote something stupid with the stuff when she’d volunteered to do his back. Michael’s running a hand over his neck and shoulder, searching for the hot sting of sunburn, when his fingers find something else, instead.

He hadn’t even thought about it when he’d stripped down to his swim trunks, the events of that drunken night now an angry, uncomfortable blur in his mind too humiliating to acknowledge. But there it is, not yet healed and bared for all the world to see. One hickey courtesy of Gavin Free. No, wait, two. Fuck, three, there’s another on his collarbone.

Michael trails his fingers along them one at a time. For the most part they’re already well on their way to fading, but within the shade of the umbrella, out of the sun and the heat, they’re infinitely more obvious. He swallows, and lets his eyes stray to Gavin again.

The other boy’s eyes are meticulously fixed on the sand between his feet. He must feel Michael’s gaze on him though, because he looks up almost as soon as Michael dares to look at him, cheeks turning a whole new level of red when he sees that Michael’s found the marks.

For a heartbeat Michael thinks he’s going to say something, and Gavin certainly opens his mouth as if he plans to. Apparently whatever is on Gavin’s mind never makes it past the thought stage, and his mouth snaps shut a second later.

Michael chews on his lip, “Hey, look, I . . .” He stalls, fumbling for what he wants to, needs to say. “Do you wanna go for a walk?”

Gavin’s mouth drops open again. “What?”

“A walk. Do you call it something else here, are you just stupid? A walk. A little jaunt up the hill over there,” Michael gestures towards the crest of grass that rises up over the sand and peaks into a roll of hills and cliffs, “A fucking stroll. Do you want to go or what?”

“I . . .” Gavin runs a hand through his hair, peering at Michael out of the corner of his eyes, “You’re not going to slam me up against any walls and threaten to punch me again, are you?”

“Considering that I didn’t let you become a smear on the road earlier today,” Michael deadpans, “I think you can trust me enough not to maim you in any fashion, as I’ve already had ample opportunity to and resisted.”

The chuckle Gavin lets out is rightfully nervous, like he doesn’t quite believe Michael, but seriously at this point Michael doesn’t give a single flying fuck. He stands, brushing sand off his swim trunks to join the rest of the sand that’s compiling onto his towel, not quite sure why he’s bothering as he’ll probably be picking sand off himself and his clothes for the next week regardless. Gavin hasn’t so much as twitched yet, and Michael turns to him, hesitant to offer his hand. He’s already experienced the continued effect Gavin can have on him through touch alone, their motorcycle adventure to get here had proved that. Sighing, Michael extends his hand anyways, “Come on then.”

He’s sufficiently surprised when Gavin actually takes it, less so when it’s dropped the minute Gavin’s on his feet. It’s not like he expected anything else.

“Where do you want to go?” Gavin asks.

Michael points one handed, the other searching for his phone in the pocket of his swim shorts. “Eh, just like up there around the cliffs, maybe. I saw some people walk that way earlier, so maybe there’s a trail or something. And seriously, I won’t push you off one, so you can stop side-eying me like you’re afraid I’m going to one-eighty and go all Jack The Ripper on your ass. Kapeesh?”

“You just want to walk,” Gavin reiterates like he can’t believe there’s no catch.

“Yes,” Michael groans. “You, me, walk, I don’t know what about that’s so hard to comprehend. We don’t even have to talk, either, if that’s what you’re so skittish of. We can just walk.” He holds up his phone, “Look, see, I’ll text or something while we go. So, just . . . Just walk with me, okay?”

Gavin’s nod makes Michael’s heart flip a little, though he does his best not to acknowledge that, and turns his attention to his cell phone as they set off.

_Michael: Help I decided to take a walk with that dickhead what even am I doing???_

_Ray: Holy shit you’re alive!_

_Michael: It’s not like you bothered to try and text me the last few days either, you know_

_Ray: I was trying to give you some space. It was no use trying to force you talk about things, you’re the master of avoiding the subject. Thought I’d just wait it out_

_Michael: Smart boy_

_Ray: You know it. Anyways, back to your nature walk with your British one-nighter. Wtf?_

_Michael: I don’t know. We’re at the beach with a group of people and I just got tired of it, I guess_

_Ray: Of what, exactly? I’m lost_

_Michael: Of being mad at him. Of the awkward silence game. Of everything. Idk_

_Ray: Michael . . ._

_Michael: It really ticks me off when you text that because I can fucking hear it in your worried voice in my head_

_Ray: Ha. That’s the point. But seriously, dude, be careful. Don’t let this fucker smack you around_

_Michael: As if. It’d be the other way around, dumbass_

_Ray: Don’t let him smack you around emotionally._

Michael growls aloud at his phone, stamping down on the bubble of fondness that threatens to overcome his annoyance at the bold statement printed on the screen.

_Michael: I hate you_

_Ray: <3_

“A friend back home?”

Michael jolts and pockets his phone. Gavin’s not walking close enough to him to read his messages, but still. “Ah, yeah,” he mutters. They’ve come quite a ways up the hill, following a soft groove in the dirt and grass that indicates that many other people have taken this pathway to the white-rocked cliffs ahead. “He was supposed to come on this trip with me, but skipped out at the last second.”

Gavin’s eyebrows lift a little, “That’s terrible!”

“Meh, he had his reasons.” It’s weird how much his earlier bitterness over the matter has started to fade, though if that’s because he’s actually getting over it or because he has worse betrayals to focus on he hasn’t quite decided. “I was mad at first,” Michael goes on, “Cause you know, we’d planned this whole thing for nearly a year. He found this girl though, who’s pretty great I will admit, and he loves her a lot. They met online, age of technology and all that crap, so he spent the money he’d saved to come to Europe to go see her instead. And I can’t really begrudge him that choice.” He shrugs, unsure of why he’s still talking, still confessing all of this stuff to Gavin. “I came by myself anyways out of spite, kinda. But I didn’t really think it through. That’s why I was so glad Barbara picked me up, and now I’ve got quite a few cool people to hang out with, and that’s pretty great.”

They’re approaching the edge of the cliffs now, the path veering between the view off the side of them and moving higher up the slope. Michael pauses a few meters from the jagged edge, staring off over the shore and the water beyond with his hands stuffed into his pockets. It’s chillier up here, the wind leaving a trail of goose pimples rippling up his back.

“Am I one of those people?”

Michael freezes, startled by the question as well as the tinge of sincere worry in Gavin’s voice.

“Do you want to be?” It’s the only reply he can think of, one loaded question in response to another. They’ve already talked about this once, or at least tried to, in the tense hours of the morning after, and it hadn’t exactly turned out well. Gavin’s tone had been harsher than, more assertive than the cautious one he speaks with now. Michael wonders if their encounter in the bar shook him up somehow, or at least made him rethink things in some way.

“Of course!” Gavin says, so quick and honest that it takes Michael’s breath away. “I like you a lot, Michael! I want to be friends! And I’m sorry, really, I am. I messed up and did something I shouldn’t have, and I know that you’re mad at me for it. I’m mad at me, too, if that helps any. Though probably not for the same reasons.” An odd sort of frown crosses Gavin’s face, hard and closed off and eerily similar to the one he’d fixed Michael with at the bar. He makes to say more, but Michael cuts him off.

“You mean a mistake,” he says, a touch more bitterly than he means to.

Gavin pales, “No, I . . . You’re not a mistake, Michael. I’m the one who made the mistake. Me, not you. Alright? I’ve never done anything like that before, never had the urge or reason to. And afterwards I even . . . While you were gone I looked up some, uh, some things on the internet just to check that I wasn’t having some kind of midlife sexual identity crisis.” Michael refrains from pointing out that Gavin isn’t halfway towards a midlife anything. “It’s not like that though.”

“I seriously don’t need to know whether or not you pop boners for gay porn, that’s way too much information,” Michael cuts in, grinning when Gavin sputters and blushes bright crimson.

“You’re not a mistake, Michael,” Gavin says again once he recovers, his cheeks still stained with the faintest of pinks. “I’m sorry for ever implying that. I tried to treat you the way I usually do my girls and I shouldn’t have, because you’re my friend.”

Cue another heart flip, Michael thinks. God, even the guy’s shitty way with words does bad things to him.

“Or at least, I think you are. And if we aren’t friends, I’d like to be. Michael, you’re . . . I can’t even begin to list it all, really. I’m a sausage with words, you know.” Michael knows. “But Michael, you’re amazing. You’re not afraid to say what you think, and you laugh like you’ve got a years worth of sunshine pent up in your chest, and you played Minecraft with me after midnight and even though you got mad I knew you didn’t really mean it. You made an art museum fun, a smegging _art museum_ , Michael. You’ve made the whole of London fun, really. All these sights and sounds and places that should have been boring have been great because you’re there! And I don’t mind your girl shirts even though they’re a bit silly, they show how easily you let people into your life and start to care about them. You didn’t punch me in the bar, even though you should have, and you didn’t let me fall off the motorcycle, and sometimes when you smile you get a little dimple on the left side and it always makes me smile too and Michael, I . . . I don’t want to lose that.”

 _Cue heart flip times one million, holy shitballs_.

Michael’s at a loss for what to say to that. What the hell can he say to that sort of, well, confession? Gavin’s eyes are averted again, wavering as they turn to glance out towards the cliff’s edge overlooking the beach and ocean below. It’s not sunset yet, far from it in fact, but the sky is still splashed with pinkish hues, perfectly outlining Gavin’s nervous frame where he stands, clenching his fingers uselessly at his sides and chewing on his lip.

There are still some missing pieces to it all, and Michael’s mind stumbles repeatedly as it tries to find the connecting point between Gavin’s continued insistence that there’s nothing more than platonic attraction between them and the contradicting mega whatthefuckery that just spilled out of the guy’s mouth. However, headless of these gaps, Michael does have a solid conclusion.

He can’t continue to ignore Gavin. Allowing his pent-up angst to simmer awhile longer needs to be put aside, because this jittery, unsure, flush-cheeked Gavin is something he needs. And maybe that’s just as a friend, like Gavin says, and maybe it’s as something else. Either way though, god, he’s missed this. He was away from Gavin for nearly as long as he’s known him, both time spans so brief he shouldn’t think to highly of them at all. Yet the longer he remains silent, the more Gavin displays signs of internal panic over all the things he’s just said, just admitted, Michael knows he can’t continue on the way he has been.

So he steps forward. There isn’t really any conscious thought in the motion, in fact the only thought that lingers in his mind at all is a simple, desperate, _Gavin_.

A brief flicker of confusion and apprehension makes its way across Gavin’s face, perhaps thinking Michael’s turning back on his promises not to hurl him off the side of the cliff. They die out though the second Michael’s arms wrap around him.

“Michael-”

“Shut the fuck up, you god damn idiot, before I change my mind.”

Gavin shuts up.

It’s definitely not the most elegant of hugs, Michael’s arms around Gavin’s shoulders and Gavin’s hands hovering above Michael’s back for an awkward minute before he fully hugs back. Plus, they’re still both clad in only their swim trunks, which Michael dutifully ignores. They’re going for friends, now, he’s not allowed to think about the way Gavin’s pressed against him in nearly all the right places. Nope.

They break apart, Gavin still a little red in the face and Michael wearing the most honest smile he’s sported since the night of their drunken escapades. “I don’t forgive you,” he says, guilty at still feeling gleeful when Gavin’s face falls. “But,” Gavin perks up again, latching onto that one game-changing word with wide, hopeful eyes, “I do want to be friends. Or, uh, stay friends. Whatever. This is your second chance, so don’t blow it.” He pointedly ignores that rather blatant innuendo, and hopes Gavin will too.

“Oh, Michael!” Gavin practically squeaks. “You won’t regret this! I promise you won’t!”

He’s jumping up and down now, dangerously close to the edge, and Michael hooks a hand under Gavin’s elbow to drag him away. “Yeah, I better not,” he mutters, the warning directed primarily at himself.

Cause honestly? Michael’s not sure he can survive even just one more fuck up in his life. He’s just not cut out for that amount of shit.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

_Ray: So you forgave him?_

_Michael: Hell to the fucking no. I’m not a god damn moron, Ray._

_Ray: I don’t understand_

_Michael: I gave him a second chance. Big difference_

_Ray: Not from where I’m standing_

_Michael: Well you didn’t fucking see his face from where you’re standing ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE GOD DAMN ATLANTIC!!!!_

_Ray: You forgave him because of his face. Oh, Michael . . ._

_Michael: Your condescending, pitying tone is not appreciated. And srsly, I didn’t forgive him. I’m not sure I ever will. He pulled some shit on me that’s not so easily overlooked, like, at all. It’s a fucking mountain of shit in my book_

_Ray: So explain this “second chance” thing to me then. Like is it banging round two?_

_Michael: No. Fuck you_

_Ray: You mean fuck Gavin_

_Michael: NO, RAY! We’re going to be friends now. Just friends_

_Ray: And you have such a stupendous track record with being “just friends” with people_

_Michael: . . . What’s that supposed to mean?_

_Ray: Numbnut, you sent me your entire pic folder last night, remember? I was swamped by pics of that redhead_

_Michael: Oh. Uh, well Lindsay is just a friend, fyi_

_Ray: A weird kissy-time friend?_

_Michael: Yes. Don’t question it, it works_

_Ray: Fine, fine. But try to keep your dick in your pants for a few days if you’re actually sincere about this “Just friends” thing_

_Michael: Quit putting it in quotes!_

_Ray: Keep me updated @}-------_

Michael pockets his phone, lips pursed as he struggles to keep his frustrated screaming entirely internal. God, Ray can be a dickhead sometimes. A completely on the mark dickhead, but a dickhead nonetheless. Michael doesn’t need someone to point out cracks in his hull, thank you very fucking much. To be honest he’d texted Ray about the matter with the vague hope of finding a voice of reassurance. But yeah, nope. Why did he ever think Ray could serve that purpose? Ray lives to contradict people, primarily Michael, and he should have never expected otherwise.

Still though, in some ways it’s comforting that Ray still apparently knows him so well, even with the distance between them. He doesn’t have to be near Michael, to listen to his explanations or read the subtle nuances of his expressions in order to understand what’s going on. Although that does make his words sting all the worse.

Because no matter how many ways Michael looks at it, from a distance, upside-down, and sideways, there’s no way in fucking hell this is going to work. He can never, ever, ever be “just friends” with Gavin Free.

Not with the way his nervous system still lights up like a network of livewires every time Gavin touches him.

Ray was totally right in repeatedly framing “just friends” in quotes.

At first when he’d done it, Michael had nearly swallowed his tongue, entire body tensing with the fear that Ray _knew_. And damn, Michael’s tried to so hard over the years to keep that part of him secret, that dirty little fucked-up bit of that couldn’t even be “just friends” with his best and until recently only friend in the whole freaking world. In the back of his mind, he wonders if Ray’s response about Lindsay was a cover, but rules that out, if only for his own sanity. He and Ray have always been honest with each other (mostly), and Michael knows that if Ray ever did find out, he’d be cool enough with it to mention it to Michael. Right? Right.

Michael stuffs those panic-laced thoughts away for later consideration, and returns his focus to the more pertinent matters at hand. AKA, matters that involve Gavin Free, who is currently sprawled out on the balcony of their latest hotel room just beyond the glass door.

“He could at least use that tacky lawn chair.”

Michael glances to his right to where Barbara is sitting on the other half of the king-sized bed, her back against the headboard and her laptop balanced on her legs. Gavin had drug the lawn chair into the room, and it seemed Barbara was intent on trying to light the dingy thing on fire with her eyes. “Take it back out there, would you?” she turns a pouty lip to him, and Michael snorts and stands.

As soon as he’s up Barbara shimmies over to stretch out across the middle of the bed, stating without words that Michael is not allowed back on. When he scowls at her she merely flashes him an annoyingly cheeky grin. “You boys are like air conditioning sponges, it’s always much cooler whenever you’re not in the room.”

“I feel so loved,” Michael deadpans. He crosses the room and lays a hand on the back of the lawn chair as if to actually drag it onto balcony. “For that,” he lifts his hand away and slides the door open, “The chair stays. You two have fun.”

“Ugh! Michael!”

Michael snickers, closing the door behind him and effectively cutting off any more protests Barbara has behind a solid pane of glass.

Gavin is laying flat on his back across the concrete base of the balcony, hands folded across his stomach, legs hanging off the edge between the metal bars, and his eyes closed. As Michael’s gaze falls to him, lingering on the way the breeze ruffles Gavin’s hair just slightly and the light tinge of a tan on his cheeks, left over from the day before, Gavin cracks open an eye. And oh yeah, the way Michael’s heart does a fucking backflip when Gavin flashes him a hesitant smile? Yeah, that’s bad. Ray would be screaming, “I told you so!” at the top off his lungs if he were here. For the first time, Michael thanks every higher power that he doesn’t believe in that Ray’s thousands of miles away.

“Uh, hey,” Michael says once he finds his voice between then rabbit-rapid beats of his heart. “Mind if I join you?”

Gavin shakes his head and Michael plops down on the concrete beside him, sighing with pleasure as he registers how cool it is. “Holy shit, dude,” he gasps as he readily falls to his back, arms hooking behind him to support his head. “I think you’ve discovered the secret to surviving summer heat waves here.”

“It’d be hellish if there wasn’t another balcony directly above us to provide the shade,” Gavin grins. “I’d hate to be the sorry sods on the top floor.”

They lay there for awhile, content with the silence of their shadowed haven from the heat. There’s a companionable atmosphere between them that Michael’s sorely missed in the past few days, tentative but there all the same. He closes his eyes, breathing in long, deep breaths of fresh air that all but sting his lungs, like he’s only just now remembering how to breathe at all. His legs slot through the metal bars boarding the sides of the balcony, swinging free into the sunlight. After a moment’s pause, he knocks one to the side, rewarded by a short, surprised giggle from Gavin as their ankles bump.

If he tried hard enough, Michael knows he could make this work, be content with just this. It would be possible in the same way living with knowing Ray would love him back is possible. And just like with Ray, whatever lingering feelings he has for Gavin would start to fade, too. He could allow things to continue to grow this way, flourish as a close friendship, get back into Gavin’s good graces enough so that such casual touches as the knock of their legs together off the side of the balcony will no longer send a current through his skin and a shiver through his heart.

Michael meant it when he said this was Gavin’s second chance, though what all that entails he has yet to decide. Testing the waters to see if Gavin’s sexuality is as sturdy as he claims is a dangerous game, and Michael isn’t sure how to go about making the first move.

So maybe that means he isn’t supposed to. Maybe this time, much like the last, Gavin holds all the white pieces on the board, and Michael just has to wait.

Fuck, he hates waiting.

Gavin’s fingers have started tapping out an off-beat rhythm against his sternum, alerting Michael to the other boy’s growing impatience with the silence long before he actually decides to speak.

“I think we should get to know each other,” he says. There isn’t even a full break for breath before he rolls over onto his side, a warning finger inches away from Michael’s nose, “Don’t even think about saying, ‘I think we already know each other pretty well,’” his voice lowers into a shitty accent that might be American and is definitely a mock of Michael’s own style of speech, “And waggle your eyebrows or anything. Don’t do that.”

Michael manages to keep a straight face while he replies, “Well you already said it for me, so there’s no need.” Gavin groans and flops back over onto his back, hands over his eyes. “Anywho, what do you mean? Like, do you want me to spout my life story or something?”

“Yeah, I guess. I don’t know, just tell me about yourself.”

Michael hums and fixes his eyes on the balcony above them, “Let’s see. I’ll be nineteen on July twenty-fourth, my best friend once made me do that Cinnamon Challenge shit and filmed it, so now the video has like a couple million hits on Youtube, and uh . . .” He wavers, unsure of how much he’s willing to share. “Ugh, fuck it . . . And I’m adopted.”

The speed at which Gavin flails and sits up to stare at him is utterly astounding. Michael watches his mouth open and close in a fair impression of a fish for a second, wondering if he’s witnessing some sort of spastic fit and should go get help, and then Gavin’s grabbing him by the shoulders and shouting, “Oh my god! Michael, me too!”

Michael blinks, “Excuse me?”

“I’m adopted too!”

“If this ends up being some mega fucked up version of the parent trap and we’re about to find out we’re siblings, I-I’m going to kill myself,” Michael says, so rapidly his words begin to falter. “Quick, quick, tell me your birthday so I can stop hyperventilating!”

“Twenty-third of May,” Gavin laughs. “Don’t worry.”

Michael clutches a hand to his chest, “Jesus Christ, I think my heart actually fucking stopped for a minute there.”

Gavin pays his minor bought of cardiac arrest no mind, and starts to rattle off questions at a speed that makes Michael’s head spin. “How old were you when you were adopted? Were you in a foster home first? What are your parents like? Do you have one or two? Are they nice? What kind of place do you live in?”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Michael holds up a hand between them, and after a millisecond of thought slaps it right over Gavin’s mouth to hold back the fucking Spanish Inquisition that’s spilling out of the other boy. “Slow the fuck down, ding-dong. And don’t ask questions you’re not willing to answer yourself. You first.”

He’s jealous of the easy smile that spreads over Gavin’s face, the way his eyes light up in delight. “Oh, alright! Let’s see, I was a baby when I was adopted, so I can’t really remember anything before then, but I’ve been told I was in a foster home for around six months or so. Apparently I caught a terrible case of croup, which was hellish for my poor dad those first couple of days. He jokes that he almost sent me back.” Gavin laughs. “I’ve only got one, by the way, one parent. His name is Burnie. Well, you know, not really, it’s a nickname. But that’s what everyone calls him.”

“And you call him dad?” Michael interrupts, curious.

“Yeah, of course! He’s really great, too, definitely puts up with my shit more than any birth parent probably would. I once fell and just about bashed my brains in, went blind for a few days, and he didn’t even get mad at me when threw up on top of the toilet!” He chuckles again, shoulders shaking as if holding back a laugh of a stronger caliber. “He’s American, like you, but he’s been living here since before I was born for business reasons. His work is all online though, so we’re free to live in Oxfordshire where it isn’t so noisy and busy. He goes on business trips a lot, too, I used to have a regular nanny when I was little.” Gavin makes a face suddenly, “A nanny who he’s now dating. Her name is Ashley. Gross. Enough of that though, what about you? I want to know about you, Michael!”

Michael hesitates. It’s not as though his story is tragic by any means, though Geoff might jokingly call it a tearjerker in the best kind of way. It’s just . . . Different, full of holes where Michael regularly falls, tripping over his own insecurities. But Gavin was honest with him, and it’s really only fair that he’s the same in return.

“I was in foster homes until I was seven,” he begins, sucking in a breath between his teeth to settle the worst of his nerves, “Labeled as a ‘problem child.’ Got shifted around a lot because of my rage issues and stuff, no one wanted to deal with me. And then Geoff and Griffon came along.” He smiles, just a little, eyes fixed on his fingers fumbling with the hem of his t-shirt. “They looked pretty silly that day, dressed in super formal getup like they were attending a fucking wedding instead of looking for a kid, all long sleeves and high collars and stuff. For good reason, though. I was at the social worker’s house that day, because she was shifting me between homes and got stuck with my sorry ass for the evening until someone could come pick me up. They were all seated at the kitchen table, and Geoff had his hands in his lap. I was playing in the next room and noticed his sleeve riding up to reveal a shit-ton of tattoos, and went to investigate by crawling under the table to get a better peek. Geoff noticed me almost immediately, saw where I was looking, and whispered, ‘Hey, you like tattoos buddy?’ before rolling his sleeve up to the elbow and adding, ‘Go ahead and touch, they’re koi fish, they won’t bite.’”

It becomes easier the longer he goes on, Michael realizes, stunned by how little effort it takes to tell the story. When he’d told it to Ray when they were eleven, he’d cried. Thankfully, there isn’t even a hint of waterworks so far. “When the social worker noticed I was under the table, she grabbed me by the arm and led me back to the other room and made me stay put. Geoff and Griffon finished their interview, and the social worker started to show them folders of potential kids when Griffon turned in her chair, pointed at me, and said, ‘What about him?’ The social worker was shocked, and started spouting off my track record with foster homes. She called me a ‘problem child, one of the worst we’ve had in years,’ and Geoff suddenly stood up, hands fisted at his sides, and snapped, ‘There’s no such thing as a problem child! Only idiots who don’t know how to deal with children who need a bit of extra help!’ ” The smallest of laughs escapes him, and he covers it with a hand. “Needless to say, their application to adopt was denied, the social worker was fucking pissed. Griffon was furious though, and took the matter to court, where the judge ruled in her and Geoff’s favor. They filed the papers that afternoon and were able to come get me within the week.”

He pauses again, noticing that Gavin’s staring at him rather intently, an odd shimmer in his eyes and his hands wringing in his lap. Michael raises an eyebrow, “Does the pep gallery have a comment?”

“I . . . No,” Gavin says, “Go on, please.”

The version he’d told Ray, years ago under the cover of a blanket fort lit only by a single flashlight between them, was far shorter, broken up by Ray’s questions and Michael’s tears. He’s not sure why he isn’t crying this time, whether it’s maturity or time that keeps his voice even. “I thought for sure they were lying the entire way back to their apartment, and kept insisting that if they weren’t they should take me back then rather than later because it always sucked more to get settled into a place and suddenly find out my guardians couldn’t stand me and were setting up to ship me somewhere else. But Griffon sat with me in the back seat the entire ride, holding me and assuring me that they were never ever going to do any such thing. Still didn’t believe her, of course. She carried me inside, too, all the way up to our floor and into my new bedroom, where she said, ‘I hope you’re a fan of green, we couldn’t agree on any other color to paint the walls,’ and dude they were fucking _bright_ green. The shade of Goosebump slime. I loved it. It took me quite awhile to believe that they weren’t going to send me back, until maybe I was ten or so. There were a lot of reassurances, because I tended to freak out every time I broke a plate or got a bad grade, sure that that would be the last straw. But they were always patient with me, especially when my freak outs turned into full-blown flip outs, and I’d break things on purpose. They’d just sit me down and talk me through it until we both understood why I did it and that I was sorry, and I always was. Geoff and Griffon are fucking saints in comparison to me, like wow.”

“You don’t call them mum and dad,” Gavin blurts out, hands quickly flying to cover his mouth as though he could hold back the words he already let loose.

“Fist of all, _mom_ and dad, you fucking uneducated dip, and second of all, yeah,” Michael shrugs. “I don’t. I know I should, I’ve wanted to ever since I was little. But I was always too nervous. I didn’t want to start calling them mom and dad and then get sent back, that would be the fucking worst. And I almost did after I realized that I was there to stay, geared myself up for it and everything one day, and then wussed the hell out. It thought, ‘Oh, I’m like ten now, maybe it’s a bit too late to start calling them that. I’ve probably missed the window.’ So I didn’t. And now it’s definitely too late, I’m out of high school now and that window is so far gone it’s in fucking space. Besides . . .” He draws off, swallowing hard, “The whole reason they got me was cause they thought Griffon couldn’t have kids. Now that she’s pregnant, that kid’ll totally call them mom and dad.”

Gavin surges at him, crashing into Michael so hard he knocks the breath out of him. The hug is brief, but tight, and then Gavin’s leaned back again to dig his fingers into Michael’s shoulders and look him dead in the eye. “They’re not replacing you,” he says sharply, steadily.

Michael scowls, “I’m not a fucking idiot, Gavin. I know that.”

“And they’re not getting a better version of you, either.”

Now that, that hits home, slamming into Michael even harder than Gavin himself had and knocking the breath from his lungs all over again. “I-”

“Ashley and my dad have been dating less than a year and they’re already talking about kids, and I thought that at first too! The baby will be wanted and loved and all theirs and it scares you, it scares me, too. But you’re wanted and loved and all theirs too, Michael, maybe not by blood, but you are. I know it.” The words rush out of Gavin’s mouth with such assurance, such unbroken, steadfast bluntness, that at first Michael can’t even formulate a response in thought, let alone aloud.

Of course he knows all that, as he said, he’s not a fucking idiot. However, even the most intelligent people surely still hold doubts deep in their hearts. Michael grew up a scared, distrustful little kid, and though he’s hardly that child anymore, he’s well aware that such insecurities aren’t so easily brushed off.

If he hadn’t flown the coop for the summer, perhaps Gavin’s reassurances would be easier to digest. Were he home right now, nestled in the comfort of that too-green bedroom every night, he might be more inclined to believe those words just a little bit more. Griffon would drag him along to her ultrasound appointments, and he’d get to see the baby that right now would still fit with room to spare in the palm of his hand up close on the screen rather than through a video message from three thousand plus miles away. Geoff would sit him down at the table with a sheet of blueprint paper far too big for such a small area and discuss Michael’s post-high school life plans with him while sketching out the furniture he wants to build in the room they’re converting from an office to a nursery. And they’d both slip baby name books into his backpack whenever he went out, favored pages dog-eared and names highlighted in pinks and blues with the occasional gender-neutral green. Were he with them to share all those moments, Michael knows he’d be more inclined to accept the existence of another person in his strange makeup of a family.

If he was there, though, he wouldn’t be sitting here, frozen and shell-shocked at the fierce certainty behind Gavin’s speech. And while nothing in the world has ever been changed simply because there’s suddenly someone there to throw pebbles in the water, Michael can acknowledge that, given time, even the smallest ripples can turn into waves.

In the end, he doesn’t say anything, finding that after a full minute of stunned silence any reply he can think of quickly dies on his tongue. He wants to repeat that he knows, reiterate that Gavin’s merely voicing what he’s already churned about in his own head a thousand times over. Except there’s definitely a difference hearing it come from someone else.

Michael knew that he wasn’t as fractured as he imagined he was long before Barbara hugged him so tight he could barely breathe and said, “ _You’re a good guy too_.” He knew he wasn’t worthless prior to Lindsay wrapping herself around him, fingers carding through her hair as she whispered, “ _You’re not_ ,” with a fervor that tears welled unbidden to Michael’s eyes. And he knew that Griffon and Geoff loved and wanted him as much as they would their biological child without being told by Gavin here and now.

But there’s something about hearing it come from someone else’s mouth that makes all the difference.

So Michael doesn’t speak. Instead, he drops his head, slowly, cautiously because he’s retesting the boundaries between Gavin and himself, onto Gavin’s arm, his forehead resting against the warm flush of skin above Gavin’s wrist.

To say he’s surprised when Gavin doesn’t recoil is an understatement, and he’s completely taken aback when Gavin uses his free arm to jerk Michael closer, tucking the other boy’s head to his shoulder, turning the motion into the strangest, yet oddly most intimate hug Michael’s ever experienced. And perhaps it’s due to how equally intimate the moment itself is, both their walls cracked and crumbling down around them and their hearts laid bare, but Michael doesn’t think that’s quite it.

Whatever the reason for the shift in atmosphere, the sudden comfort that they’ve so effortlessly managed to fall into, Michael will never fucking know because five seconds after Gavin pulls him in, Barbara flings the sliding glass door open with an astounding level of strength and gusto.

They both jump, Gavin letting out a startled squawk that draws a choked snort out of Michael. For a minute, Barbara just stares at them, eyes narrowed and her hands on her hips. “Well,” she says, clearly deciding not to question whatever the hell she just caught a glimpse of, “I was going to ask if you guys wanted to go out to some Schnitzel and Spritz place Lindsay just texted me about, but you seem to have enough of a sausage fest going on out here on your own, so never mind.” Apparently, she’s not above tormenting them, though.

Gavin makes another absurd, gurgling, bird-like sound, and Michael rolls his eyes. “Are Miles and Kerry and that weird Monty dude going too?”

“No,” Barbara says. “They’re too busy whipping out their dinglies for each other and touring Stonehenge today.”

“Then Gav and I will get a sausage-less pizza, and you can go on your girl date with Lindsay on your own.” Michael lifts a challenging eyebrow, daring her to protest or make another wisecrack while Gavin continues to sputter uselessly in the background.

Challenge fucking accepted. Barbara mimics his expression tenfold and crosses her arms over her chest. “Look, I know I told you to make things happen, but-”

“Gavin,” Michael cuts her off, turning his attention to his flustered companion, “does pizza and a game of Minecraft sound good to you?”

Gavin’s mouth snaps shut, his eyes wide, “Wha . . . Yeah. Sure. That sounds great.” There’s a level of nervousness to his tone, as though he doesn’t quite understand how Michael not only managed to diffuse the uncomfortable situation but also deny whatever Barbara thinks she saw pass between them. He sits up a little straighter regardless, simmering down to a less flummoxed, embarrassingly squeaky version of himself. “There’s also a, uh, an _Austin Powers_ marathon on tonight too that we could watch.”

Barbara looks skeptical, bottom lip pulled up between her teeth as she glances between the boys. “Well . . .”

Michael stands, casually moving to lean against the doorframe where he’s close enough to pass a whisper between them that Gavin can’t overhear. “I’ll be fine. I promise,” he murmurs. “No hanky panky will take place in this room tonight or anytime in the foreseeable future.”

“Michael . . .”

She knows, has known since he and Gavin came back from their trek up the cliffs along the beach that his promises of a second chance for friendship are merely a façade on his end, and she worries. Michael understands that. Hell, he’s fucking worried too, probably even more so. He’s playing a dangerous game. But as things stand now, he still has no intention of making the first move, his black pieces kept lined up and guarded on his side of the board. “I’m a big boy,” he smiles, “If I fuck up, I’ll deal with it properly this time. Okay?”

Reluctantly, Barbara nods. “Alright. But seriously,” she points an accusing finger at him, “Either way, when I come back here I should be able to run a black light over ever surface and find it spotless. Your dual stupidity needs to take place elsewhere if at all.”

“You realize this is a hotel room, right?” Michael deadpans. “You’d be lucky if you could find a spot under the bed that didn’t light up like the fucking moon under a black light.”

Barbara gags, “Ugh, stop. I don’t need to think about that.”

“Then scoot,” Michael grins, waving a hand into the air-conditioned hotel room, “Go get ready and take Lindsay out on the town so you don’t have to contemplate all the ancient jizz stains that paint every hotel and motel the world over.”

She flips him off, and Michael laughs.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

True to his word, Michael spends that night and quite a few after in comfortable, sex-less bliss. Well, okay, not bliss, because he’s a little too busy trying to fucking figure out the Rubik’s cube of puzzle that is Gavin Free.

Because see, the thing is, nothing has really changed. They don’t quite fall back into the routine of friendship or friendly acquaintances or whatever the hell they used to be. And as far as Michael’s concerned, he’s pretty sure it’s impossible to do so after you’ve fucked on the floor so hard you saw stars. It just doesn’t work that way.

What they are, or at least what they act like, is super-mega-awkward dorks (a term Barbara has been muttering under her breath all week). Barbara spends most of that week wandering in and out of their current hotel (the first they’ve stayed at for more than a day, in fact), returning only to change clothes, shower, and occasionally sleep. Michael texts Lindsay about it on Wednesday, curiosity kills the cat and all, and gets a vague reply of “ _Don’t worry, we’re fine._ ”

Michael envies them, the easy way they slip into playing the role of friends while still maintaining obvious and open interest in one another. Whenever Barbara does come back, she preens in front of the mirror in a way Michael’s honestly surprised at, taking far longer to get ready than she did the times they went out to bars. He sits on the counter, holding her makeup kit in his lap and fiddling with the eyelash curler one evening, and confesses, “I feel like I should be pulling some older brother sort of act here, the way you do with your scary glares sometimes. But I don’t know who I should be laying the down low on, you or Lindsay.”

Barbara quirks a small, affectionate smile in his direction. “The good thing about girls is that we’re infinitely more capable of maneuvering the confusing muddle that is human relationships than men are. But if you really must know, we’ve decided to keep this as much of an open and casual thing as possible for the duration of the trip. If by the end of it we want something more, we’ll talk about it and figure out something from there.” She holds out a hand, “Curler, please.” Obediently, Michael places the eyelash curler into her palm and begins to fiddle with a bottle of nail polish instead, rolling it around between his fingers and enjoying the cool feel of the glass against his skin. Barbara pays him no attention, and turns back to the mirror. “We’re young, you know?” she says after a pause, doing that stereotypical girl-habit thing of making an O with her mouth while she works on her eyelashes. “We still have our whole lives ahead of us. Lindsay wants to get into film, and though I haven’t chosen anything yet, there’s still school and degrees and jobs to do, and so much time left in our lives. Too much for us to place our primary concerns and priorities in romance.”

“You have your shit together on a whole other level from my mess,” Michael mutters.

Her lashes curled to perfection, Barbara takes up the nail polish bottle Michael’s messing with and holds out a waiting hand towards him. Befuddled, Michael just stares at her. “Hand,” she says, and smirks when he hesitantly lifts his right hand towards her. Taking it, she uncaps the bottle and lifts the brush ominously. Michael doesn’t even blink. “You’re not going to protest?”

“No?”

“Well, don’t whine about it later then,” she hums.

Michael watches, interested as she dips the brush back into the bottle and lifts it to swipe a stripe of purple down the nail of his index finger. “What if she’s, like, your soul mate or something though?” he asks.

Barbara considers this question a moment, occupied by gliding purple lines down Michael’s nail until it’s completely covered, and then moves on to the next one to give it the same treatment. “Do you believe in soul mates, Michael?

“Not really,” Michael admits. “It implies that people are somehow incomplete without a very specific other person in their lives. I don’t like that. And I know it’s super hypocritical for me to say, but isn’t it better that we learn how to be complete on our own? I mean, people can help, because sometimes we get ourselves stuck in a rut and even though we tell ourselves how to get out of it, sometimes it’s just too hard until someone else reaches out and says the exact same thing. That doesn’t mean they’re your soul mate though. If everyone who ever helped me figure out how to fix my own shit was my soul mate, I’d have like a hundred fucking soul mates.” Barbara finishes his right hand and moves on to his left while Michael lifts it and examines the way the purple polish, still wet, glistens under the bright bathroom lights. “I do believe in souls, though, I think,” he adds, and Barbara hums a note of agreement. “And that you find people whose souls you’re more drawn to than others. But those people don’t make or define who you are, and if we have to go as far as to say that someone is capable of completing someone else, it should be in a broader sense. Human connection makes life as a whole complete, as in the experience of living. It doesn’t change who you are as a person.”

“I like the way you think, Michael Jones,” Barbara says quietly.

Michael flushes. “It’s fucking stupid, though.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” She releases his left hand and watches while he lifts it to compare to his right. “There’s remover in the bag, if you feel like taking it off. You should probably wait for it to dry first though, or it’ll make a mess.”

“Nah, it’s cool.”

An hour later finds him laid out across the single bed in the room, blankets kicked to the end and an iPad balanced against his bent legs, purple-polished fingers tapping away at the screen as he flicks through all the photos he’s taken of the trip so far. He makes copies of the best of them, moving them to a folder he can zip and send to Geoff before the night wears out.

Michael doesn’t believe in soul mates the same way he doesn’t believe in sparks. God damn, though, sometimes he’s sure the universe is out to prove him wrong. Because even in this quiet, subtly tense lull of their lives, Gavin’s presence still strikes up such a hot, desperate flare in his chest that it would be all too easy to change his mind on such fictional, fantastical matters. At the end of the day, Michael really doesn’t believe in a lot of things, not ghosts or fate or cheap magic tricks. He does, however, believe in the power of chance. Not necessarily luck, per say, but the infinite possibilities of a single action.

“You’re going to bruise your tailbone sitting on the floor all the time,” he says, as nonchalantly as he can manage, eyes never leaving the screen of his iPad.

Gavin looks up from where he leans against the side of the mattress, laptop resting on his knees. He’s been there for close to an hour, and Michael’s not oblivious to the way his gaze has been flickering longingly to the bed whenever he straightens up again, readjusting his position as though doing so will somehow soften the cheap hotel carpet beneath him. “Wha?”

“You’re not banished to the floor, dude,” Michael rephrases. He lifts his hands, “I won’t do anything untoward, either. Your honor will be safe, so move your butt.”

The readiness with which Gavin rises and crawls up onto the bed beside him takes Michael off guard, especially when Gavin deposits his laptop off to the side in order to hover alarmingly close to him. “I don’t think that, you know,” he says slowly, steadily holding Michael’s gaze in a way he hasn’t dared to do all week. “You don’t have to act so defensive all the time.”

“Uh . . .”

“You touch Barbara and Lindsay constantly,” Gavin continues. He reaches for one of Michael’s hands and spreads the fingers of it out across his own, smiling slightly as he notes the nail polish. “You let Barbara do this to you, and you let Lindsay dye your hair. You allow them both to hold your hand in public.” Michael physically feels his heart shudder as Gavin gently, oh so carefully allows his fingers to fall between Michael’s. “And you claim that they’re your friends. Yet every time you allow me into your bubble, it’s with the insistence that you’ll keep mostly to yourself. Even after we had a good heart-to-heart on the porch the other day, you continue to do so.” His eyes still haven’t left Michael’s unwavering in their conviction as he speaks. “Did I . . . Did I really break you that badly, Michael?”

“No,” Michael says, so immediate and insistent that it leaves him just a little bit breathless. It’s not a lie, despite all the wounds Gavin might have left upon him in the too-short time they’ve known each other, he’s not broken. In fact, were he to describe himself at the moment using only a single word, it would be _healing_. And he’d like to think Gavin is, too. He curls his fingers, willingly tightening the hold Gavin has on him, purple nails scraping against the other boy’s knuckles. “No, of course not.”

Gavin glances to their hands, eyes settling on the skin-to-skin connection. “This isn’t weird, is it?” There’s a faint tremor to his tone, but his grip doesn’t loosen.

Yes. Yes it is, Michael thinks. Because as much as loved Ray, as a friend or otherwise, they’d never held hands. Thus far it’s been a right exclusively limited to Barbara and Lindsay, who are friends but . . . In a rather strange and different sort of way. He doesn’t find it weird when they reach to take his hand while they’re all out together, and if were ever to do the same with Ray he’s pretty sure Ray would think it was totally bizarre. Why Gavin doesn’t think the same is the fucking mystery of the moment. Michael has his suspicions as to the reason, but dares not voice them yet. Whether or not those suspicions are true is for Gavin, and only Gavin to know at the moment. “Only if you think it is,” he finally decides.

If this is comfortable to Gavin right now, he has no reason to attempt to divulge the reasons why, let alone protest it.

“You’re a mystery to me, you know,” Gavin says suddenly, startling Michael from his thoughts. The other boy is still intently staring at their intertwined hands, mouth set in a thin line that’s not quiet a frown.

“What?” Seriously, what? _Michael’s_ the mystery? Michael who wears his fucking bleeding heart on his sleeve? Not Gavin, who walls himself up like he’s preparing for the zombie apocalypse?

“I‘m a knob, Michael.” Gavin’s voice has fallen to a whisper, and Michael has to strain to catch every word of it. “And I’m a knob intentionally. The stuff I pulled on you isn’t much different than what I’ve pulled with everyone else I’ve ever slept with. For the most part, I don’t regret any of it, either. I don’t feel bad about ignoring texts from girls when I get bored of them, or sneaking out of their apartments in the dead of night, or even the quickies I’ve managed in public restrooms.” He doesn’t notice the face Michael makes at that, or maybe just chooses not to comment on it. “But you already know all that, don’t you.”

“. . . Yeah,” Michael swallows.

“And you’re still so willing to let me in.” Gavin turns his gaze back to Michael, their eyes finding each other and holding steady so that when Gavin murmurs, “Why?” the confused, plaintive sound of it goes straight to Michael’s chest where it lingers and aches for a long, silent second.

Michael squeezes Gavin’s hand against his, reaffirming without words that he’s not going anywhere. “Because we’re still just kids, Gavin. Society might expect us to suddenly understand how the world works and successfully navigate it once we hit eighteen, but realistically we’re all going to spend the next few years floundering and failing at even the simplest of things. As I said before, I haven’t forgiven you. You haven’t earned that, not yet. And though you didn’t go so far as to break me, it did hurt. It hurt a fucking lot. But I’m willing to look past all that for now because I’m not dumb enough to give up something great.”

“Something great?” Gavin echoes.

“Yeah. I think we could be something great, Gav. Whether that’s just as friends, or best friends, or something else entirely is up to you, but whatever it is, it’ll be great. Like you could wake up tomorrow and tell me we should form a boy band, or become internet celebrities, or travel the fucking world on a motorcycle living with only the clothes on our back, and I’d just say yes to whatever ridiculous crap came out of your mouth because even though you’re a complete and utter douche-canoe sometimes, I like the ever loving fuck out of you regardless. Which I’m an idiot for, and I accept that.”

“Why?” There’s an unexpected amount of vulnerability in Gavin’s eyes when he says that, and Michael recalls Gavin’s own confessions on that blustery cliff top, the honest way he’d spilled his thoughts and heart out.

“Because of this,” Michael says, fingers clenching against Gavin’s hand. “Because you don’t treat me like I’m made of glass. Because you have the courage to question and stand up to the world, and to me. It’s the same shit that got us into this mess, but it’s also what set us on the path to getting out of it. Most of it is probably a defensive reaction,” he notes the small, quick jerk of a flinch he gets from Gavin at that observation, “and that’s fine. We’re taught to wall ourselves up. That’s why it’s important, I think, to do stuff like this,” he squeezes Gavin’s hand again, “to meet people and let them fuck you over and mess with your head in all the worst ways because while we don’t need other people to complete us, we do need them to grow. For better or for worse.”

Michael doesn’t cling to the connection when Gavin allows his hand to slip out of the entangled grasp they wrought, doesn’t complain when Gavin moves to settle back against the headboard with a good few, careful inches of space between them. “And if it’s for worse?” Gavin asks, newly released fingers flexing uneasily across the stomach of his shirt. “If I turn out to be every bad thing you’ve ever thought about me with nothing left to be redeemed?”

“Then we walk away from this and hopefully learn from it.”

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

_Michael: What if I’m not doing the right thing here_

_Ray: Is that a question? I don’t see a question mark so I can’t tell_

_Michael: Idek_

_Ray: Look, dude, I can’t help you if you’re having some sort of existential crisis here. That’s so far out of my league it’s in SPACE_

_Michael: I don’t know what I’m doing anymore, Ray_

_Ray: I don’t think any of us ever know what we’re doing. Literally that’s the definition off life. Just YOLO your way through it_

Michael huffs and pockets his phone again, falling back across the mattress with an arm thrown over his eyes. For all the good advice Ray is capable of doling out, he forgets that in the instance he actually needs any advice, Ray’s go to attitude is ironic internet slang. Which is oh so fucking helpful.

“What the fuck even do I see in that guy,” Michael mutters into the crook of his elbow.

“See in what guy?”

It takes every inch of Michael’s self control not to jump off the bed like a jittery cat, and even then he still lets loose a rather horrendous-level twitch of surprise. Removing his arm from his face, Michael props himself up on his elbows, his gaze landing on the open bathroom door. Gavin’s leaning on the frame clad in only a pair of skinny jeans and a towel draped over his shoulders, his hair and torso still damp from the shower. “No one,” Michael snaps when he realizes he’s so busy staring he hasn’t replied to the question.

Gavin arches an eyebrow and turns away to cross the room to his open suitcase. “So do you only fancy blokes then?” he asks as he rifles through his clothes, tone for too nonchalant for the subject matter.

“I’m not really a gender-limited sort of dude,” Michael says slowly. He fails to see the point of this conversation, what the hell does his own sexuality have to do with anything? Gavin’s the one who dicked around (pun intended) with a dude while maintaining a stubborn heterosexual identity. And seriously, Michael still hasn’t figured that shit out. At this point he’s not even sure he gives a fuck. “Why do you care?”

“Just curious, I guess,” Gavin shrugs. He straightens up, a sky-blue tee in his hand, and deposits his towel on the windowsill in order to pull the shirt over his head.

It’s the closest they’ve come to fully broaching the subject of Gavin’s own sexual preferences. Still pretty far off the mark, Michael acknowledges, but a heck of a lot closer than they’ve gotten thus far. They of course have mentioned the night in general, vague terms and references to in regards to apologies and Michael’s feelings. As with most things however, Gavin’s careful to keep the subject of himself out of the conversations.

Michael’s been making a mental list of the things he’s learned and the things he hasn’t about Gavin Free, and it’s startling to see how much longer the latter category is than the first.

What he knows about Gavin is confined to what he can see. He knows the wheat-hued shade of Gavin’s hair, the hazel-green of his eyes, his height just a bare inch and a half taller than Michael, his shitty taste in films ( _Goldmember_? Really?), the odd half-smile he does whenever he’s genuinely happy, and that he prefers to look at the world with the muddled scientific outlook he churns around in his mind, observing beauty by its atoms rather than its whole.

What Michael doesn’t know about Gavin is why he builds such impenetrable walls around himself, why he’s content with one-nighters rather than actual relationships, why he slept with Michael, why his gaze turns so cold when Michael had asked for answers that following night at the bar, and why despite that icy glare, he’s still so desperate for Michael’s friendship.

He could write a fucking textbook on the mysteries of Gavin Free and still never solve anything.

And he could write a second textbook on the reasons he likes Gavin anyways.

He likes that odd half-smile, the bare distance between their heights that forces Gavin to tilt his head down just a little whenever they talk, and the way he laughs even through crap-ass movies like _Goldmember_. He likes the way Gavin sits, long and lanky form curled at the spine like he’ll never grow old enough for such positions to form aches in his bones. He likes the noises Gavin makes whenever he’s surprised, the hiccups and shrieks that resemble bird chatter. He likes that despite all the walls, all the defensive, carefully chosen sentences and questions, Gavin is still intrigued enough to want to be near Michael.

_Michael: Maybe I’m like the snake in the apple tree, tempting him just for the chance to see what the terrible outcome might be_

_Ray: You’re a crazy person and I have no idea what you’re saying anymore_

Now fully dressed, Gavin flops down across the bed at Michael’s side, laptop in hand. Really, this should be the part where Michael asks questions of his own, tries to untangle the knots and coils of Gavin’s thoughts and find the thread that leads to the answer he needs just as much as he wants. He doesn’t, though, inquiries falling silent before they even form full thoughts as Gavin spreads out beside him on his stomach to place the laptop across the pillows at the base of the headboard.

“I’ve got _Jaws_ loaded up on Netflix,” he says as though it’s the easiest thing in the world, as though laying here with Michael, little more than a week since they had kissed and then some, is just that simple.

And in many ways, it kind of is. Michael flips over onto his stomach, leaving Ray’s last text unanswered. “Did you know,” he grins as the movie opens with the stupid, bad-acting teen couple on the beach, “That the reason they barely show the shark in this thing is because the animatronics kept breaking?”

“No,” Gavin returns, “But that probably would have made it a better movie.”

“Fucking hell the fuck no it would not have! The reason this shit is great is because you never see the shark! It adds suspense!”

“It adds boredom.”

“You’re dead to me.”

“You like me anyways,” Gavin smiles.

Which, fuck, that’s the gist of it right there. In a hundred and one messed up ways, he really kinda does. And that’s the real puzzle of it all, isn’t it.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Barbara literally has to spend an entire day convincing them to go out with her in the evening, going so far as to threaten to slam their laptops closed during the middle of a very intense round of Minecraft which they’d begun solely for the purpose of ignoring her.

“You two nuggets have been cooped up in this room for days!” she snaps when they look at her with very purposeful Bambi eyes. “And while I’m totally all for this newly renewed friendship weirdness or whatever, it’s starting to turn into flat out party pooping, and I’ve had enough of it. We’re going out clubbing, and you’re coming. That’s final.”

“You can’t make us,” Gavin says. Which is technically true, Michael silently agrees, but Barbara doesn’t give a flying fuck about that when she leans down and grabs Gavin by the collar of his shirt, hauling him up to eye level like he’s some kind of naughty house cat. The noise Gavin makes doesn’t help to dispel that image from Michael’s mind at all.

“Maybe not,” Barbara growls through gritted teeth, “But I can certainly kill you and drag your corpse around like some kind of _Weekend and Bernie’s_ remake.” She releases him, and Gavin scampers off towards the bathroom at a speed even Wally West would admire.

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Michael says when Barbara turns her fiery glare onto him, hands lifted in surrender.

“Good. Now, go sit on the bed while I pick out a shirt for you to wear.”

Michael scowls, “Why the hell did I even bother to pack my own clothes? I’ve barely worn any of them this entire trip.”

“Oh hush, you love it,” Barbara coos.

Which, yeah, okay, he does. Barbara and Lindsay’s shirts may often times be ridiculously tight, but the fabric is a heck of a lot more comfortable, and he’s not completely oblivious to the fresh amount of interest wearing them garners from both girls and boys. He doesn’t have to let her know that, though. With how willingly he put up with allowing her to paint his nails the other day, he probably doesn’t have to.

With all the protests and bitch fits out of the way, within an hour Michael finds himself standing in line to get into a club with the entire fucking ragtag gang, including a clearly pre-game drunk Miles and Kerry each hanging off an arm belonging to still-probably-a-S.H.I.E.L.D.-agent Monty.

“You have the patience of a saint,” Michael tells him over the thrum of music drifting out the doors of the club.

Aaaannnndd Monty says nothing. Okay then.

Any massively awkward silences that might have followed that are aborted by Lindsay, who breaks away from her conversation with Barbara to loop an arm through Michael’s and gift him with a quick peck on the lips that makes him grin wider than he has in days. “He’s like an adult babysitter I don’t have to pay,” Lindsay says near his ear.

Michael laughs, “That is a messed up metaphor I don’t want to think about. Hello to you too, by the way,” he leans in, pleased when she readily meets him for a slightly more lingering brush of their lips. “I haven’t seen you in days.”

“That’s entirely your fault. You were invited whenever I asked Barbara out all week, you know.”

“Are you protesting my lovely courtesy of recognizing your attempts at getting her alone under the guise of inviting me to make it appear like a friendly outing?” he asks slyly.

Lindsay smirks, “I knew I liked you for a reason.” She pats his arm in a totally not condescending manner, and flicks her eyes briefly to where Gavin is bouncing on his heels at the head of their group. “So, what’s been going on with you? Besides being holed up at the hotel with Gavin for days on end. Give me all the deets.”

Michael snorts and shrugs his shoulders, “There’s not really any ‘deets’ to give. We’ve basically been living and breathing Minecraft, ordering takeout, or ‘take away’ as Gavin calls it, and being lazy bums.” He raises an eyebrow when Lindsay purses her lips in disbelief. “What? Did you think we spent the time porking? After the disaster of the last time?”

“Don’t tell me that isn’t your eventual intention,” she says hotly. “At the beach you eyed his figure in swim trunks like he was an all you can eat buffet.” Well, he couldn’t deny that. “And you forget that we spent an entire day and then some together where you spilled your freaking guts out to me, so I know things.”

“You know things,” Michael deadpans, unimpressed. “Really. Do tell.”

“I know you’re pissed at him for all of eternity but if he came up to you and told you to get on your knees you’d do it in a heartbeat anyways.”

“I’m concerned that you’ve been thinking about this a little too much,” Michael hisses, wary that their conversation might be being overheard by those around them. No one seems to be paying any attention, however, Monty absorbed with keeping a hold on Miles and Kerry, who are getting a little too excited by the neon lights flashing through the doorway, and Barbara and Gavin having struck up a conversation that from what little Michael catches seems to be on the topic of Doritos.

“And you haven’t?” Lindsay accuses, nails digging into his arm just a little.

“Ow! Jesus! Okay, yeah, maybe I have.” She sticks her tongue out at him and softens her grip, her chin falling to his shoulder and her eyes wide and eager. Michael sighs heavily and lowers his tone to tilt his head down, mouth near her ear. “So what if I have? I’ve had a lot to think about recently.”

“Such as?”

“Such as the fact that I’ve only ever seen Gavin hit on people when he’s had a few drinks in him. I’ve been waiting all week to see if he’ll try and push the boundaries again, to test if it was really just a mistaken once off like he claims, but the only time he’s so much as approached anyone with any intention is after he downed some coolers from the hotel minibar and ran into some girl in the hall while getting ice.”

“So are you waiting to see if he hits on other dudes while tipsy? Or just if he hits on you again.”

“At this point I really don’t care,” Michael states. “I just need to . . . I need to see what he does, and more importantly see how I react, and then I’ll figure out what to do from there. Maybe.” There’s more uncertainty behind his words than there’s been in days, his doubts creeping back into his mind now that he and Gavin have been forced to leave their little comfort bubble and confront the real world once more. Honestly, it’s all a little more fucking terrifying than he’d thought it would be.

“Will you be okay?” Lindsay whispers.

“Hopefully, yeah.”

She smiles, though the expression is strained at the edges. “I worry about your optimism here, Michael. You know chances are nothings going to work out the way you want it to, right?”

He nods, “No shit, Sherlock. But that’s kind of the point of life, right? Like you said? The whole fall off the horse and get right the fuck back on it metaphor and stuff. You fall, and then you get back up again because despite all the terrible, horrible things in this world, abandoned kids and abandoned people and all the fucked up twists of self harm and self doubt, there’s good stuff too. So it’s best to look forward to that, the good things, then focus on the far more likely bad ones, I think.”

“What sort of good things do you look forward to, Michael?”

“Good places, good people, good emotions,” he rattles off. “I don’t know yet, really. The things I know right now are limited, like what I’m going to do with my life and what I want out of my future, that’s all bullshit. There’s no point in me looking too far ahead until I’ve decided what to do with what I have here and now, right? I have to first figure out what I want and how to hold onto it before any of that crap. Barbara told me to stop standing on the sidelines of my own life, and she’s right. I can’t just accept whatever the fuck the universe decides to doll out for me, cause there’s probably no meaning to life other than the meaning we give to ourselves, and I keep waiting for some divine answer I’ll probably never get.”

They’re moving forward now, shuffling into the dim entrance of the neon-lit club. “It’s that kind of attitude that’s either going to get you killed, or make you amazing,” Lindsay murmurs near his ear.

When Michael turns to reply, she’s gone, vanished into the crowd and the dubstep-laden music. “Well I hope it’s the latter!” Michael says to absolutely fucking no one.

Half an hour later finds Michael seated at the bar, where he’s totally not alone because he has a very nice bright-ass pink cocktail in his hands, thank you very fucking much. Who needs people when you have alcohol.

Besides, he’s spent the last half hour purposefully shooing everyone away. Tonight, he is Michael Jones, man on a mission, and distractions are not welcome.

He is also Michael Jones, the rapidly tipsy. What the fuck even is in these pink funfetti lady drinks? Little umbrellas? There’s totally some little umbrellas in there. Maybe they’re laced with something. “Something fantastic,” he mutters to himself, pulling a blue umbrella out and sticking the toothpick end in his mouth. His eyes scan the dance floor as he twirls it across his tongue. He’d lost Gavin in the mumbo-jumbo dancing craziness a few minutes ago, and has yet to relocate him. Which is a problem.

This club is a lot different than the last few they’ve been to. It’s larger, the dance floor taking up a larger portion of the space and giving everyone more room to breathe. The drinks are nicer, hence Michael’s giddiness to order a fruity cocktail rather than something on tap, and the people are nicer, too. And although he’s currently unable to find Gavin in the crowd, it’s a hell of a lot easier to spot people in general.

Barbara and Lindsay are off in their own little corner of the world, still within Michael’s range of sight on the complete opposite side of the floor, heads thrown back in open-mouthed whoops that are lost in all the noise. They’d gotten a hold of some sort of glow-stick type paint since they’d arrived, and Lindsay’s sporting bright lines of it beneath her eyes while Barbara’s face is speckled like a splashed canvas.

Monty it turns out, is a bizarrely good dancer, and has twice managed to make everyone else on the floor form a ring around him so that they can gawk at his amazeballs skills. He’s not hard to find even when the crowd moves to thicken again, his shock-white wig difficult to miss. And he doesn’t even have to bother looking for Kerry and Miles, because their voices cheering wildly whenever people start to make room for Monty are the only ones that can be heard above the constant thrum of music.

So really it’s just Gavin who’s difficult. As usual.

Michael raises his glass to his lips and frowns as he finds it empty. He lifts a hand towards the bartender for another. With how loud it is, there’s no point in even trying to order a different drink for this round, it had taken him nearly five minutes just to successfully order the first, so he’s pleased when the guy slides another pink-as-all-get-out cocktail over to him. As it is, he seems to be the only one content to make it that simple. People are clambering for drinks on either side of them, drawn back to the bar as the music shifts to a slower song. Stubbornness nearly makes him stay, the urge to imitate a very pissed off boulder flaring up while the drunken pushing and shoving continues to his left and right. The commotion makes it hard to continue looking for Gavin however, and when a pair of particularly drunk boys with matching emo-fringe haircuts just about knock him from his stool, Michael gives up.

“Sorry, sorry!” one of them calls after him as Michael slides grumpily off the stool, one hand shielding his drink.

“Totally his fault,” the second giggles.

Michael gives them both the stink-eye, briefly contemplating the pros and cons of tossing his fruity drink over the shorter one’s gaudy pink and purple space shirt. As the only con is losing his cocktail and having to dive back into that bullshit, he decides against it and wanders away towards the dance floor.

It’s not as though he hates dancing, he thinks as he dodges between the writhing bodies to make his way to the back wall, it’s just not really something one does alone, that’s all. Literally everyone occupying the floor right now is either part of a group or part of a couple or part of a . . . A whatever the fuck Monty, Miles, and Kerry are. Right now they look like a pair of dip wads bouncing around in the company of their super-spy pimp lord, but hey, whatever works for them. Lindsay and Barbara are still jamming in the corner, quickly becoming lost as the music shifts back to something with a decently paced beat to lure the crowd back. Michael lets his eyes linger on where they were for a heartbeat before moving on to rescan the crowd once more.

Strangely enough, Gavin was a hell of a lot easier to find in a hectic mess like this, and it only took Michael a second or two to spot him this time, picking out Gavin amongst the throng by the noodle-esque dance moves that forced everyone in the vicinity to take a step back. Jesus fucking Christ.

Even from a distance, Michael can tell Gavin’s had a few drinks. Not enough for full-on drunkenness, but plenty to begin to tear away at his defensive walls. He pays no heed to his surroundings as he wiggles his way between people, covered in glow sticks he picked up who knows where. Michael tries to follow his line of sight from where he’s leaning against the wall, curious to see what those few drinks will do to Gavin’s flirtatious tastes.

Gavin stops at a girl first, a pretty blond who giggles at his attention and breaks off from her group to talk to him. She’s very animated, hands moving while she speaks and Gavin grins and nods along. It’s a short-lived conversation, and Michael watches with interest as Gavin waves at her and begins to thread back through the crowd again, the noodle dance renewed in its fervor.

Throughout the course of another half hour, Michael observes Gavin flit between girls like a butterfly. He talks with the second a bit longer, and ends up shaping a crude flower out of his multitude of glow sticks to put in her hair while she smiles. The guy certainly has charm, that’s for sure. Or at least he does when he’s standing still, and not attempting to blend with the crowd of dancers by doing his best impression of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Yeesh. The third is a ginger, who appears immune to his attempts and shoos him off with a pitying shake of her head and a laugh with her friends that makes Michael scowl.

Michael’s drink is long since finished when Gavin alights beside the fourth girl, and he twirls the stem of it between his fingers, paper umbrellas rattling against the glass while he watches. There’s a new level of sobriety to Gavin’s stance by now, a seriousness that Michael suspects would normally send him back to the bar for another round before continuing on his quest. Whatever he talks about with lady number four is as brief as it was with lady number one, and he ends it with a simple friendly wave before waltzing off again, disappearing into the mull of people for a second before Michael locates him again.

To his shock, he finds Gavin has paused beside the two emo-fringe boys from earlier, and Michael’s eyebrows climb towards his hairline as Gavin untangles two of his glow sticks and offers them over, mouth moving a mile a minute. The one with the space tee loops his around his neck without hesitation while his partner laughs and gestures between the pair of them, his words just as indiscernible as Gavin’s beneath the music. Gavin nods along with whatever’s being said though, and after a moment points a finger towards the slightly taller boy’s head. The comment uttered makes the boy duck his head a bit, grinning and lifting a hands to where Michael can now make out a set of simple, round earrings. Whatever is said must be the end of the discussion, because Gavin once more gives a short wave and leaves.

Michael’s curiosity gets the better of him this time though, and he drops his empty glass onto a table against the wall, sights set on emo-fringe one and two with murderous intent. He weaves through the crowd, reaching them while Earrings is trying to slip his glow stick gift over his head.

“Hey!” Michael shouts as soon as he’s close enough. The fact that they hear him is a fucking miracle. Space Tee looks up, all grins and giggles and clearly more drunk than he should be. Michael frowns. “That guy you were just talking too, what did he say?”

Earrings rolls his eyes and hooks a hand under Space Tee’s arm, pulling him a little closer to his side as if he thinks Michael’s a threat. Which, yeah, okay, American/Jersey-laced accent probably gives that impression. “He just asked us a few questions,” he responds, admirably even for the amount of glaze he’s got going on in his eyes. “Literally, that’s it.”

“What kind of questions?”

“Silly ones,” Earrings seems more curious now, and releases his partner’s arm as he focuses more on Michael. “Just, you know, weird questions you don’t usually ask strangers. I didn’t mind, though.”

“He asked if we were together!” Space Tee pipes up.

“Yeah, and how we met and stuff. Silly, you know what I mean? And he said my earrings were ‘top,’ and muttered something else I couldn’t hear.”

“He gave us glow sticks!” Space Tee yells.

Earrings rests a shushing hand over Space Tee’s mouth, “What’s it to you?”

“Nothing,” Michael assures, because literally what the fuck even. Has Gavin been asking everyone questions like that? He turns away from them with a grateful nod, and pushes his way back into the heart of the crowd.

It turns out that he doesn’t have far to go to find Gavin, as after only a few steps he notices him rapidly noodling away from Monty and towards the back of the club. Michael pauses, torn between immediately following and going in for questioning round two. Sighing, he makes his way to Monty, who is mysteriously sans Miles and Kerry at the moment.

“Where are your boys?” Michael jokingly calls once he’s within range.

Monty’s expression doesn’t even twitch, and Michael straightens a bit when his steely gaze lands on him. “I sent them to go see if they can get some water because I don’t want to deal with hangovers and vomit come morning. But you don’t care about that, do you.” He hikes a thumb in the direction Gavin went, “He just left. After telling me that he was straight, but was trying really hard to get a boner for me anyways. Which was lovely to hear.”

Michael physically feels his face pale, “Wait, what the fuck?”

Monty shrugs. “Look, I honestly don’t care about you two’s weird sexual crisis shit you’ve got going on. But if he’s going around saying that to every dude in here, that’s going to get us kicked out, and I’d like to dance for at least another hour, thanks.”

“Wha- I don’t care about- Fuck, never mind. Get back to your Men In Black life or whatever it is you do.”

“I’m an animator!” Monty calls after him as Michael pushes through the crowd in the direction Gavin had gone.

Were he a more patient sort, Michael could go around and talk to all the girls Gavin had chatted with too. Except he doesn’t care. He really fucking doesn’t. Whatever Gavin had been surveying people about isn’t something that matters right now. What matters is that Gavin had gone up to not only girls with his inquires, but also three guys that batted for the opposite team, and making a pass at at least one of them. An unsuccessful and very strange pass, but still.

Progress. Michael was definitely going to label that as progress.

Or he is until he spots Gavin again. Gavin with his hand on the small of the back of the one and only Lindsay Tuggey.

Then Michael sees red.

He’s across the dance floor before he can even suck in a proper breath, hands fisting into the collar of Gavin’s shirt as he drags him back. And though this time there isn’t a nice, solid wall to throw Gavin against, it’s an all too familiar situation. “Are you fucking _serious_?” Michael spits out, nothing but the purest of venom on his tongue. “ _Lindsay_? You spent all night fucking around with various pretty girls and then have the gall to go for _Lindsay_? What the actual fuck is wrong with you?!”

“Michael,” Lindsay has a hand on his shoulder, but Michael ignores it, attention on the panic rising in Gavin’s wide eyes.

“If Barbara doesn’t tear you to shreds, I certainly fucking will,” Michael says between his teeth. “You think either of us would let you pull your flaky shit with her? Wrong!”

Gavin squirms, “I wasn’t-”

“If you lie to me, your second chance is over,” Michael cuts in. He means it, too. This time he really does. Fuck with him, fine. He can take it, he’s been ready to deal with it all week. Fuck with Lindsay? That’s so far out of bounds it’s not even in the country anymore.

Gavin’s face falls impossibly further, and Michael grits his teeth as he watches those green eyes lock up again, watches the walls raise. “Fine! I was! I was flirting with her! So what!?”

Michael glances to Lindsay, who readily meets his eyes with a confirming nod.

“Why?” he asks. His tone comes out calmer than he feels, the red-hot rush of rage still coursing through his veins.

“Because I don’t know what else to do!” Gavin struggles in his grip, dangerously near hysterical. “I don’t know what else to do, Michael! I bevved up, but I couldn’t carry on a chat with any of the birds! I just kept - And then I tried blokes too! Just to see if that would help but I can’t!”

Lindsay’s pulling at Michael’s shoulder now, short, quick tugs of urgency. “Can we take this outside? People are starting to stare.” Michael glowers, but releases Gavin without further ado, exchanging his hold on Gavin’s shirt for an even tighter one on the other boy’s wrist. Gavin yelps, and Lindsay circles around them to shove them both towards the back door. “I’ll text Barbara that we cut out early, just go. Let’s get out of here.”

She hurries them along an entire block before they stop, Gavin still plaintively trying to worm out of Michael’s grip when they rest under the overhanging roof of a closed bakery. “Michael!” he hisses when Michael pointedly clenches his fingers.

“Explain this shit to me again,” Michael says lowly. “Like I’m five.”

Beside them, Lindsay pockets her phone and arches an eyebrow in Gavin’s direction, “I can tell him, if you’re going to be a chicken shit about it.”

The expression on Gavin’s face shifts from scared to down right horrified. Lindsay purses her lips and folds her arms over her chest, tilting her head to the side in a silent, “Well?” that’s more of a threat than anything else.

Gavin swallows. “I wanted to hook up with some girls but I couldn’t focus cause I kept thinking about you so I tried some blokes but I smegged it all up and I wasn’t interested anyways and so I went to Lindsay because I knew you were close to her and maybe it was some kind of bisexuals favor other bisexuals thing but then you crashed in between us before I could figure it out and now I’m really scarred and still stupidly heterosexual!” He says it all in one breath, impressively, and Michael lets go of his wrist for that alone. Gavin sucks in a shaky inhale in order to get air back into his lungs, his gaze averted and his face red. “S-sorry . . .”

Michael stares at him a moment, running a hand down his face as he tries to sort out the crap that just spilled from Gavin’s mouth. “So let me get this straight.” Lindsay snorts unhelpfully. “You hit on girls, you hit on dudes, all of this unsuccessfully, and then tried to hit on Lindsay as some kind of fucked-up bisexual test?”

“Fucked up and failed,” Lindsay says, examining her nails with feigned disinterest. “As he said at the end of that rushed and botched up tale, we determined that he was heterosexual. He doesn’t get the tinglies for any dudes-”

Michael’s swears he feels his heart plummet right out of his god damn body and into the center of the earth.

“-except for you.”

And then soars right back up into his chest with a fiery shudder. “What?”

“I didn’t say that,” Gavin mutters.

“You implied it,” Lindsay smiles, patting him condescendingly on the shoulder. “Which is why it’s a good thing you’ve come to me, as I’ve been cooking up a fantastical, wonderful solution for you dickheads all week.”

“Dickheads,” Michael mouths, severely put off by the term that doesn’t at all match the coy smile Lindsay is giving them. “What are you getting at here?”

Lindsay curls her fingers into Gavin’s shoulder with her left hand, and grabs onto Michael’s with a similar grip with her right. “Michael, you like Gavin.”

“Um-”

“I am not here for stuttering idiot time,” Lindsay says, “And that was rhetorical, so shut up. As I said, Michael, you like Gavin. You like him in a stupid, no holds barred way. We’re all aware of this. And Gavin, you like girls. But your heart does the flippy over thing for Michael despite that, and your dick-”

“Lindsay!” Gavin shrieks.

“Seriously, shut your mouth. Let me finish. Your dick is mega interested in Michael too, completely disregarding your usual preferences. Which understandably freaks you out a bit, especially coupled with the fact that you actually like him to boot.”

Who the fuck says “to boot” Michael thinks, not daring to say it aloud because Lindsay’s steely glare is DEFCON One level terrifying right now.

“So my solution is a threesome.”

What.

Michael blinks as his brain completely short circuits. Did he just hear that right? He couldn’t have. He must have boarded the crazy train somewhere between the words So and Solution while Lindsay was talking.

Unperturbed but the stunned silence in the wake of her announcement, Lindsay continues, “I’m tired of you dinguses fumbling around like chickens with your heads cut off, and Michael you’re adorable but your plans are still crap to the max. This is a one time only deal here, by the way. You know the SNL bit where they sing about how it’s not gay if it’s a three way? It’s like that. You two can get it on, I can have some fun, and Gavin won’t have another stupid, big gay freakout because, again, not gay if it’s a three way.”

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

With an argument like that (AKA, a super shitty one), Michael doesn’t really know how he and Gavin end up at Lindsay’s hotel anyways. And sitting on the edge of the bed, hands folded nervously in his lap while Gavin fidgets to his right a foot and a half away? Yeah, probably the most awkward moment of his life. Lindsay had retreated to the bathroom as soon as they’d arrived, waving them towards one of the two beds with a, “Get comfortable” before disappearing behind the door.

They’re definitely not comfortable. Not in the normal way or in the innuendo-laden sense Lindsay had most likely been referring. Fuck, Michael can’t even meet Gavin’s eyes.

This is not how he wanted this to go at all.

Were Michael to be given the chance to explain all his carefully laid plans, that would be the first thing he’d say. He wanted this to be easier, to happen naturally without some definitive and divine intervening hand, in this case Lindsay’s hand. That’s what he’d been going for when he gave Gavin a second chance, a casual, careful, natural route. Because at the core, no matter how impossible it still seems, he’d rather have Gavin has a friend than not at all. And this? This stabs a knife right through that idea once and for all.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, watching out of the corners of his eyes as Gavin lifts his head. “This isn’t what I wanted.”

“Then what did you want?” Gavin asks, equally soft.

“I don’t even know anymore, Gav. Maybe I was hoping you’d come to some magical realization that you were wrong and you’d sweep me off my feet anyways. Something dumb as hell like that.”

Gavin’s silent for a moment, long enough that Michael chances a glance at him to try and read his expression, only to find that Gavin’s apparently been waiting for him to look his way. “I wasn’t wrong,” he says once Michael meets his gaze. “I’m straight, Michael.” His fingers clench in the comforter beneath them, tight enough that Michael can see his knuckles turning white. “But that apparently doesn’t mean a sodding thing when it comes to you.” Michael clamps his teeth down hard on his lip, willing himself mute until Gavin’s said what he needs to. “And that’s frustrating. It’s frustrating, and annoying, and it’s driving me mad.” He grows quiet again, wringing the comforter tight against his palms.

“Maybe you’re thinking about it too much,” Michael says.

Gavin lets out a strained, short burst of a laugh. “Yeah.”

“Maybe we both are.”

Gavin’s fingers slowly straighten, uncurl from their tight wind in the hotel blankets. “Talked to a guy who had earrings tonight, subtle things, none of that gaudy stuff. For a second after I noticed them I thought maybe I was like, heteroflexible or something. But then I realized I was just thinking that they’d probably look even better on you.” Michael forgets how to breathe in that cliché, terrible way where you have to force the supposedly automatic muscles to work again, restart the motors of inhale and exhale by actually thinking about it. All of which is extremely difficult to accomplish when Gavin puts all his weight onto one side so that he can lean over and cup a hand around the back of Michael’s neck, thumb brushing over the lobe of his ear. “At the rate you’re going, you’ll end up letting Lindsay and Barbara do them for you eventually, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Michael whispers, the question he just answered not fully registering because Gavin’s too close, and the single syllable hitches painfully in his throat.

“I’d like that,” Gavin runs his thumb around and up the shell of Michael’s ear, and Michael shivers from that point all the way down to his toes. _Fuck_.

He pushes Michael backwards across the mattress with a startling, casual ease, and holds him there with one hand splayed across his chest. There’s no force in the motion, so Michael falls mostly of his own accord, willing and pliant beneath Gavin’s touch. He watches, counting the beats in his rising heart rate as Gavin maneuvers himself to straddle Michael’s hips. The fingers of his other hand still playing across Michael’s neck and ear. His tongue rolls over his lips and Michael chases the movement with his eyes, reading it like he tries to read everything Gavin does. The stiff line of his spine, the ever-faint tremble of his legs, the twitch of his hand with every heartbeat where it lays over Michael’s sternum, even without those signs, Michael would be able to notice the anxiousness Gavin’s displaying. This isn’t like the last time, and Michael inhales as he realizes that in their previous encounter of this manner, Gavin had been displaying a feigned air of confidence.

The mask has fallen away now, and Michael keeps oh so still as Gavin’s hand moves over his chest, clenching and unclenching above his heart. For the first time Gavin’s face seems truly vulnerable, his pupils blown wide in hooded eyes, his lips parted for the barest of breaths. He glides his fingers down, following the invisible line across Michael’s body from sternum to navel and then back up, dancing over Michael’s collarbone and to his neck to join the other. A soft nudge is all the cue Michael needs to turn his head, cheek pressing against the comforter as Gavin leans down and drags his teeth over Michael’s earlobe.

Michael bites his lip, a pinprick of copper tang hitting his tongue when he does. _Fuck fuck fuck_. Every muscle in his body screams at him to move, to arch up in reaction. He resists through sheer power of will. Gavin feels him tense though, and lifts his head back into Michael’s line of sight. His cheeks are flushed and the shift of position casts his breath over Michael’s neck and jaw line, wringing an uncontrollable, full body shiver from him. “What do you want, Michael?” he murmurs against skin. “Tell me.” His hands part from Michael’s body completely for a second, and Michael fears he’s changed his mind before he feels fingers gliding across his open palms.

This time, he does arch into Gavin’s touch, no longer able to hold back when Gavin curls firm fingers between his own, holding his hands over his head on the mattress. In this position, the line of Gavin’s body now runs mostly parallel to his own and he pins Michael to the bed with a squeeze of his knees on either side of Michael’s hips. They’re nearly nose to nose, but Gavin doesn’t close the gap, as if Michael’s mouth is the last lock standing between them and this uncharted territory. And honestly, Michael doesn’t have an answer for Gavin. He doesn’t know what he wants, the only recurring thoughts in his mind consist of jumbles of _fuck_ , _now_ , and _need_.

But with Gavin hesitating to kiss him, maybe that’s the best answer he can give right now.

The grip Gavin holds on his hands is loose, and Michael easily dislodges it so that he can bring one arm up, tangle his fingers in Gavin’s hair, and pull him down. It’s far from elegant, their noses and teeth bumping with the suddenly desperate urgency it sparks between them. When Michael pulls back for air, a breathy laugh tickling his lips, his heart soars to see that Gavin’s smiling, too.

The second kiss is easier, Gavin’s hands moving to cup Michael’s cheeks and draw him closer. A sigh of relief passes from one mouth to the other. All the reasons they’d had to hold back slip away by the second, rolling off them like raindrops in a splash of sunlight. Gavin breaks it this time, bites at the tender point Michael had ingrained on his lip earlier before drawing back. He shifts, pushing Michael’s legs apart and settling between them to skim a hand up under the hem of Michael’s shirt. The other nudges under one of Michael’s knees and urges him further up onto the bed.

Michael complies, settling across the middle of the mattress and propping himself up on his elbows, content to let Gavin explore. Gavin traces out whorls and figure eights over his stomach, hiking Michael’s shirt up with each motion until it starts to get tangled under his arms.

The bed dips behind him, and Michael gasps as another set of hands slip beneath his back and tilt him upwards to straddle Gavin’s legs. Nails scrape up his ribs, and he’s blinded for a moment as his shirt is tugged over his head and off. “So, am I still invited to this little party? Or are you good,” a voice hums to accompany the new hands settling on his hips.

Michael’s head drops to Gavin’s shoulder as another shudder of violent need ripples through him. He hooks one hand into the cloth of Gavin’s shirt and reaches back with the other, fingers finding a cool flush of soft skin. “No, stay, Lindsay. Stay.”

His breath hitches as he feels more than sees Lindsay lean over him, her hands still firm on his hips as she meets a waiting Gavin for a kiss. Why Michael had ever thought this would be a bad idea, god only knows. It’s fucking _perfect_. He raises his head just a little, tucking it against the hollow between Gavin’s neck and collarbone as he watches them part, Lindsay running her tongue over her bottom lip thoughtfully. She’s already naked, which simultaneously disappoints and excites him as he drinks in what he can glimpse of her bare curves in the position he’s in.

“You’re definitely going to need a little help here,” she smiles, fingers hooking under the line of Michael’s jeans which are already starting to feel ungodly tight. “But first, please continue stripping.” Gavin’s huff of laughter flutters over Michael’s hair, and Michael grins.

Lindsay moves her hands to overlap Michael’s, guiding them underneath Gavin’s shirt and leaving them to dance over the line off hair there. Michael makes quick work of it, unceremoniously tossing the shirt across the room as quick as possible, distracted by Lindsay looping her arms around him to undo the button of his jeans. He leans back against her, back bowing as she removes her hands for Gavin to replace them and drag his pants down and off, his boxers caught up in them and following suit to leave him a victim to a sudden chilled rush of air. “Jesus, fuck,” he gasps. It’s not even that fucking cold, really, it just sears in contrast to how painfully hot his skin feels.

Michael leans forwards again at Lindsay’s prodding, places a quick kiss to the corner of Gavin’s mouth and pushes the other boy over to bounce down across the mattress. “You look like a startled starfish,” he laughs, hands shaking with excitement as he struggles with the button of Gavin’s jeans.

Gavin brushes his him aside, “Skinny jeans are the devil,” he smirks, “here.” He unhooks the button and obliges when Michael pushes at the underside of his knees, lifting his hips so they can be pulled off a little easier. “Like a present,” he snickers as Michael struggles. “Gotta unwrap me first, Michael.”

“Dick in a box,” Lindsay sing-songs from the edge of the bed. She’s pulled her purse up onto her lap and is rifling through it to pull items out and deposit them on the comforter between them. Michael’s breath hitches as he spots a couple packets of lube amidst the condom foils. He quickly averts his gaze as Gavin sits up again, distracted by the other boy’s urgent hands on his hips that pull them flush together. A groan makes his way out of his mouth and Gavin swallows it into his own, his hand falling to stroke languidly over Michael’s cock.

“Don’t get him too worked up just yet,” Lindsay warns.

Gavin draws away from the kiss, and as Lindsay returns to them leans over to catch her mouth again, a brief entanglement that makes Michael miss the subtle rip of one of the packets. Lindsay’s attention turns fully to him after a pause, her hands maneuvering him a little further up onto Gavin’s lap and kneading the last vestiges of tenseness from his spine. She kisses him, too, ghosts across his lips, warm and lingering before Gavin takes over.

In comparison to Lindsay, Gavin’s kisses are infinitely more devastating. They pull all the breath from Michael’s lungs, leave him flushed and panting and so pinpoint focused on the rush of lightheaded desire it makes shudder through him that he barely notices Gavin’s hands trailing over his ass, spreading him, until Lindsay’s slicked fingers are circling his hole.

He gasps, a new level of breathlessness overtaking him as she carefully slips a single digit inside. She leans over his back, other arm encircling him in a soothing, half embrace. “Shh, shh,” she hums, her lips pressing between her shoulder blades. “Don’t tense up.”

Michael nods, unsure if he can form proper words right now, and tries to force his muscles to relax. It’s not quite as easy as it sounds, and Lindsay and Gavin must exchange another glance over his shoulder because a moment later Gavin’s tilting his face up with a thumb, placing soft kisses over Michael’s jaw line. “We don’t have to if you don’t want to,” he murmurs between each brush of his lips.

“No,” Michael insists, “No, keep going, just give me a sec.” He breathes, focusing on Lindsay tracing out sideways eights just below his ribs, on Gavin’s hands curling into his hair, calm despite their equal inexperience here. It takes him a minute to process it, to allow his body to unwind naturally between stuttering hitches of his still too-fast heart rate. “You sure seem to know your way around this for someone who doesn’t have a dick,” he comments cheekily as Lindsay starts to resume her work. It’s still vaguely uncomfortable, though it’s not necessarily bad, and thus he can’t really complain.

“I own a strap on. Or three,” Lindsay says. The nonchalant way in which those words are uttered shouldn’t send a jolt straight to Michael’s cock, but it does anyways, and he whimpers at the mental images that flash through his head at rapid-fire pace. Lindsay chuckles at the sound. “Don’t get too excited, they’re not for you.”

After awhile, the discomfort becomes nothing more than a faint twinge at the edge of his senses. He’s far more occupied with Gavin’s mouth, the languid, method-less air in which they trade them. It helps of course that Gavin is paying equal attention to his cock, lazily stroking them together between their bodies. Indistinctly, he finds himself wondering if he could get off just from this, this cool ease that’s just enough and yet not too much. Hell, he gets so out of it that he doesn’t even register that Lindsay’s added a second finger. Or at least he doesn’t until she crooks them and the god damn fucking universe explodes behind his navel.

It’s so fast, so sudden, and Michael swears aloud as his entire body seems to strain at the seams. He comes completely without warning, crying out in surprise, hands scrabbling to find purchase on Gavin’s shoulders as the thick ropes of his sudden orgasm splash between them. For fuck’s sake, he legitimately thinks he goes blind for half a second, what with the way his vision swims. “Sorry, sorry,” he gasps, trembling with aftershocks. Thank god Gavin’s moved to snake an arm around his back, cause Michael’s not sure if he could hold himself up on his own at the moment. “That was just . . . _Jesus_.”

Gavin shakes his head, lips pursed as he tries not to laugh under the challenging glint of Michael’s glare. “I’m not,” he says between unconvincing giggles, “I’m not laughing.”

“You are dead to me,” Michael grits out.

He moves back as Lindsay pulls at him, releasing his death-grip on Gavin’s shoulders while she pushes him down, belly-first to the comforter. “You’re fucking eighteen,” she says, “It happens. And because you’re eighteen, it’ll probably happen again. Stop freaking out.” Michael cranes his head over his shoulder and grins as she points an accusing finger at Gavin, who holds his hands up innocently in return. “It’s mostly your fault, I told you not to over-stimulate him and you couldn’t keep your hands off his dick. Both your dicks. Whatever. You’re no longer allowed to touch _anything_.” She pats a hand between Michael’s shoulders, “Take his hands, you are now his restraints. No dick touching.”

Michael does as ordered, huffing into the comforter at the aghast look Gavin gives them. “Bossy!” Gavin exclaims.

“Hypocritical,” Michael returns coyly, recalling Gavin’s previous tendencies of taking charge. Gavin flushes, and any further teasings are cut short as Lindsay repeats her earlier move, and all the blood in Michael’s body rushes south with renewed fervor. “Jesus fucking Christ tits on a cracker!” he hisses, hips jerking. Lindsay aborts his instinctual motion with a stern hand to the back of his knees, insistently pushing against him until Michael complies and shifts upwards, groaning as he realizes she’s positioning him so that he can’t rut against the bedcovers. “You are a cruel, evil demon,” he mutters, Gavin nodding in agreement.

“You’ll thank me later.”

Michael really doesn’t think he will, but as things stand right now he also can’t find much reason to complain at the position he’s in either, so whatever.

It’s a fucking miracle that Michael manages to maintain his grip on Gavin’s hands, due in part to the fact that Gavin allows their fingers to tangle and lock together. And that’s really the only thing that keeps Gavin from jerking off from what Michael can tell, what with the way he’s squirming. And were Michael’s hands not already conveniently occupied with keeping Gavin from touching himself, he’d be tempted just to do the guy a favor, because the sight of Gavin’s cock, slick with precum and straining nearly flush against his stomach is not helping matters in the slightest. Then again, Michael himself is probably the cause of that. Lindsay is doing him no favors, and doesn’t have any qualms about keeping him stoutly pinned when all he wants to do is writhe against the comforter under her motions.

She’s up to three fingers now, and while Michael has sworn up and down twice now that he’s ready, she has yet to pull away. “Gavin’s going to blow it if you don’t hurry up,” he warns her, chest heaving as he glares over his shoulder to catch her gaze.

“If a guy could come without touching himself, I would have figured it out by now,” Gavin hisses, his words trailing off to a whine as he notices Michael licking his lips at the thought.

Lindsay finally pulls out, wipes her fingers on the comforter (ew), and levels Gavin with contemplative stare. “Yeah, you’re in trouble,” she concludes. “I can take care of that, though.”

Gavin sighs as she approaches him, body already arching appreciatively towards her. His relief is short lived however, as Lindsay moves right past him and reaches over the edge of the bed and fishes something out from her purse, brandishing it in front of Gavin’s face so fast that Michael misses it. Gavin clearly doesn’t though, because his grateful smile turns to panic as soon as he sees whatever it is. “No, don’t-”

Lindsay pauses, one eyebrow raised, and Michael cranes to try and catch a glimpse of the item tucked against her palm and out of his range of sight. “Really? Do you really think you’re going to be able to pull off a second orgasm if you come?” she asks. “Cause I don’t. Michael’s ready now, and you’ll take at least another ten minutes to work yourself up again, and that would be a waste. Unless you want me to take him.”

While at this point Michael’s dick doesn’t really care who takes him, his mind is chanting a desperate mantra of _Gavin, Gavin, Gavin_ that drowns out any and all input from his little head.

“No,” Gavin relents, though he maintains his wary look towards the item in Lindsay’s hand. “No, I’ll do it.”

“Good!”

From Michael’s position, what exactly occurs is a little obscured. He sees Lindsay reach between Gavin’s legs, down below his balls with one hand, hears Gavin yelp, and barely catches sight of her slipping something over his cock with the other hand before she’s completely moved away again, and Michael is left to stare while she rips open a foil packet off to the side. There’s a thick band of metal around the base of Gavin’s dick now, and Michael’s mind helpfully but blankly supplies the word cockring for him. Oh god.

“Michael,” Gavin says between his teeth, a little more high pitched than he was a moment before, “This is the one and only time she’s invited. Because if I have to have sex like this every day I will _die_.”

Lindsay snorts in disbelief, but Michael’s mind is too busy spinning over the implications that, Lindsay’s involvement aside, Gavin considers this a possibly recurring scenario. Michael releases Gavin’s hands with a moan at the thought, pressing his face into the comforter. “Enough, enough,” he begs, unable to look up in order to watch Lindsay roll a condom down over Gavin’s cock because it’s all just too much right now. “Someone just fucking fuck me right now, so help me god.”

He listens to the sounds of Lindsay directing Gavin, fingers clenching in the bedcovers as he struggles to get a hold on his breathing. It’s Gavin’s hands that end up on his hips this time, gliding up the backs of his legs and ass to knead soothingly at his skin. “Here,” he hears Lindsay say, deft fingers untangling his from the comforter and curling in between, “Relax, Michael. Just breathe in and relax.”

“You realize I don’t really have any idea what I’m doing, right?” Gavin stage-whispers behind Michael.

“You realize you’re not helping by saying that, right?” Lindsay snaps.

Michael cracks an eye open, aware that yes he is freaking out, probably more than just a little bit, and is met by the sight of Lindsay’s calm smile. And he’s totally not hyperventilating right now, nope. No.

Lindsay’s moved to stretch out on her stomach, her head pillowed in her arms that cross over once before her hands join with Michael’s between them. She smiles again when Michael pries the other eye open. “Shh, it’s okay,” she whispers, thumbs rubbing over the backs of his hands. “You want this, right? You want Gavin to fuck you, want him in you so deep and so hard that you see stars.”

“Yeah,” Michael agrees. Cause that sounds fucking lovely and yes please.

Lindsay leans in and kisses him, right on cue with Gavin leaning over him and pushing into him. “Fuck,” Michael swears, and Gavin instantly stills. “No, don’t stop, it just feels weird.”

“Good weird or bad weird?” Gavin asks, and god, Michael thinks for a second that he loves him just because of the concern in that question despite the fact that he can literally feel Gavin shivering with restraint behind him.

“Just weird weird,” he replies, “Double weird. I’ll get used to it.” Hopefully.

“Definitely weird,” Gavin says, and with a swift jerk of his hips bottoms out, bowing over Michael with a silent gasp on his lips.

Michael waits, shifting around on his knees as he tries to adjust to the rather invasive feeling. Lindsay’s still got a tight grip on his hands, and when he settles, propped up his elbows so as to ease the weight of Gavin against his back, he’s grateful of the grounding feeling of her fingers between his. “Do I need to do anything for you?” he murmurs against the corner of her mouth as Gavin starts up an agonizingly slow tempo.

“No,” she smiles. “Tonight’s about you.”

And hello, those have to be the best fucking words Michael’s ever heard in his entire friggen life.

Gavin’s initially slow pace allows Michael room to breathe, to adjust and keep up until he’s readily pushing back into Gavin’s careful thrusts, aching for more. “Contrary to popular opinion, I am not actually made of glass and I would be grateful if you’d fuck me like you mean it,” he says hoarsely after awhile, forehead resting against one of Lindsay’s arms and his staggering pants leaving sheens of moisture over her skin.

“Tilt his hips up a little more,” Lindsay instructs Gavin, pressing a kiss to Michael’s mouth and angling his shoulders lower with a hand. 

Michael hisses as Gavin’s grip on his waist tightens, and he pulls his knees up a little further to help and “Oh _FUCK_ there you go! Cheezits and Christ on a cracker!”

“You have some interesting profanities,” Gavin laughs, rolling his hips and striking the same spot Lindsay had coolly played over before.

“Stop talking, more fucking,” Michael snaps, “I am not cut out for this shit and I’m not gonna last, as everyone should be well aware from the earlier incident.” He flushes, and lowers his head onto Lindsay’s arms again.

Weird really is the only word to describe it all, Michael thinks. There’s no other all-encompassing word that seems to fit. The sensation of Gavin moving behind him, in him, over him, so carefully despite Michael’s continued, rasping pleadings because though no one ever said it aloud, they all know this is a first for him. A fucking fan-freaking-tastic and glorious first, but a first none the less. And Lindsay’s fingers in his hair, her breath and her lips over the side of his face, the corners of his eyes, keeping him stable and there and just at the brink of the edge. Accompanied with the tremble of his own body, all of that is weird. It’s weird as fuck.

And he loves it.

Michael knows Gavin’s close when his thrusts start to stutter, revert to a less controlled motion. He wants to hold out until Gavin comes, wants to be able to focus on the stiffening jerk of Gavin’s hips and the way his fingers will clench hard enough to bruise over Michael’s hips. But then Gavin’s gasping out his name like a prayer, a breathy, “Michael!” uttered against the bend of Michael’s spine and yeah nope, he’s done for.

Lindsay kisses him through his second, earth-shattering orgasm, steals his cries right out of his lungs and tangles her fingers in his hair where Michael feels them interlock with Gavin’s, buried together in auburn curls. He still feels Gavin come, faintly acknowledges it in the back of his mind when Gavin bows over him, nails digging into the already tender marks on Michael’s hips, and Michael just about passes out from failure to drag enough air into his body. He nearly collapses too, right into the lines of white he’s so lovingly created across the bedding, but Lindsay stops him with a firm pair of hands to his shoulders. She pushes him back, ignoring his wince as he settles onto Gavin’s lap with the other boy’s still half-hard cock deep inside him.

He watches, fairly dazed out of his ever loving mind, while she rolls the comforter up in a ball and throws it off to the side of the bed for some poor cleaning lady to take care of. His whole body feels like a fucking noodle, weightless and pliant as Gavin slowly eases out of him, and Michael’s left with the vague, yet oddly satisfying feel of emptiness before he actually does pass out.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Michael doesn’t think he’s every woken up so fucking comfortable in his entire life.

The sounds of London traffic are as obnoxious as they’ve been since he arrived, and he’s unusually stiff and achy in a few places one really shouldn’t be pleased to be stiff and achy in, but _god damn_. He stretches out in the early morning rays of sunlight leaking through the blinds, splaying out on his stomach and wiggling a bit between the sheets to maximize the cool, lovely drunken feeling that seeps into his bones. When he actually deigns to open his eyes he grins, met by the sight of Gavin curled against his left side and Lindsay his right. “Fuck me,” he murmurs dazedly, happily.

“That can be arranged,” Gavin mumbles into his pillow, and Michael laughs.

“Only if it’s, like, the laziest sex ever dude. I’m still a bit sore.”

He doesn’t expect Gavin’s eyes to light up the way they do, and Michael suspects Gavin didn’t actually think he’d say yes. “Hey,” he murmurs, catching Gavin’s face between his hands and drawing the other boy closer, their legs tangling together beneath the sheets, “We’re good, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“You, me, we’re okay. You’re not going to freak out this time.”

Gavin tilts his head, leaning into Michael’s touch, “Mmmm, yeah. Its’ weird, though. Like you said.”

“Weird because you’re in bed with a guy and a chick? Or weird because you’re in bed with me,” Michael asks.

“Weird because it’s the morning after and I haven’t tried to hastily flee the scene of the crime.”

Michael opens his mouth to protest the word choice there, because fucking what excuse you his assly virginity was freely given, not stolen, but Gavin silences him with a kiss. It’s a rather heady one as far as how they’ve kissed before, the sort that tends to lead into something more. Which is why Michael halts it by placing a firm hand over Gavin’s chest to break them apart. “So,” he says, mulling his multitude of still unanswered questions over in his head and trying to pick the most important one. “I’m an . . . Exception? To your heterosexuality I mean.”

“Something like that.”

“And you’re okay with that . . .”

Gavin sighs, averting his eyes in a manner that makes Michael’s stomach somersault with dread. “No,” he admits and hey, at least he’s honest. “But I’m going to try to be. Cause surely there’s got to be a reason, right? People don’t spend their entire lives chasing girls all over the gaff and then suddenly start tripping over a single bloke for no reason.”

There’s an underlying implication of some sort of cosmic destiny shit in that reasoning, Michael recognizes, but he decides against telling Gavin he doesn’t believe in such things. “Yeah, maybe,” he says instead.

“So I’ll try to make this work, alright?” Gavin continues, and Michael only has to nod once before Gavin’s closing the gap between them again, kissing him hot and needy.

There’s some shifting around, a few stifled giggles, a bit of a scuffle over the unwrapping of the condom, and one pinch from Michael to Gavin when the latter gets too handsy too fast, but otherwise it’s fairly easy to find himself tucked back against Gavin’s chest, his hands tightening over Gavin’s thighs as Gavin slips two fingers into him. He inhales sharply, despite still being fairly loose from the romp that, with a quick glance at the bedside clock, must have only been a handful of hours before. “Careful, careful,” he whispers, though he’s not sure if he’s saying that more to Gavin or himself.

Gavin is a quick student it seems, because the slow, calm way he continues to prepare Michael is an almost exact copy of the way Lindsay had done so the night before. So it’s only natural that once again, Michael finds himself quickly panting and begging for more, heedless to the fact that their third bed partner is still asleep until Gavin’s sliding into him again and he can’t help but gasp out a sharp, “Whoa-ho! Good morning!” as he tenses up and clenches, probably too hard considering the discomforted hiss Gavin utters against his shoulder.

Lindsay’s eyes flutter open, and they stare at her for a second before the three of them break down into hysterics. “Well, that’s one kind of wakeup call,” Lindsay laughs, one hand rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

“Causal breakfast sex,” Gavin chirps over Michael’s shoulder, a not-so casual roll of his hips making Michael bite down hard on his lip to restrain a very un-manly squeak. “Care to join?”

Michael releases his lip, eyes snapping fully open in surprise at the extended offer. Fuck yeah, Gavin really is a man after his own heart.

Lindsay however hesitates, hand still obscuring half her face so that Michael can barely make out the thoughtful purse of her lips. “Come on,” he urges, barely keeping from crying out again as Gavin continues his lazy thrusts without so much as a moment’s pause. When she still doesn’t respond, he rolls his eyes and mutters, “Well geeze, and here I thought that by you suggesting a threesome on the street last night I’d finally get to fulfill my lifelong dream of becoming a Michael-sandwich.”

He doesn’t even have time to blink before a foil packet is thrown at his face, and he grins gleefully as he opens it. “Knew you’d come around.”

“Knew you’d be a dick about it,” Lindsay huffs.

It turns out it’s a little hard to roll a condom on oneself when you’re already a little sexually preoccupied, and Michael gasps out an apology as Lindsay takes it from him with an amused laugh. “Look, it’s easier on bananas in high school,” Michael says as haughtily as he can, which is not much because the claim is shortly followed by a moan as fuck yeah Gavin hits that sweet spot dead on. “A-and sex-ed doesn’t cover how to do it when you’ve g-got a dick in your ass.”

Gavin snorts, “Michael, stop, you’re going to kill my boner.”

“I am not you lying shithead! I can fucking feel you getting harder by the second!”

Gavin just laughs more, and Michael’s tempted to swing a hand behind him and smack the smug asshole. Any thoughts of doing so are forgotten a heartbeat later as Lindsay moves to take him in hand, swing one leg over his hip, and oh fucking Jesus.

Michael gasps as she envelops him, startled by the overwhelming heat of it. He rocks into her deeper almost instantaneously, partly on instinct and mostly because it’s right in time with Gavin’s slowly quickening thrusts. “Well it’s a good thing we didn’t do this last night,” he says when he manages to open his eyes again, never having realized he closed them in the first place, “Cause I would have died. This is great. This is perfect. Holy shit, Lindsay, you’re fucking perfect.”

She smiles into the kiss he gifts her with and slips an arm underneath his head to tangle her fingers in Gavin’s hair.

And yeah, okay, being a Michael-sandwich had not been a lifelong dream of his, but is sure as hell was now. A very fulfilled lifelong dream, check that shit off the bucket list. What up.

Michael blames teenage hormones on the fact that it only takes him a few minutes to end up on the brink again. Fuck it, he has got to work on that. He reaches behind him, hand finding Gavin and urging him to find that angle that’ll set off that supernova behind his navel again. And to his credit, he really does try to hold out a little longer, drags his nails over his Lindsay’s spine as he struggles not to tense up and topple over the edge. He focuses on the plush, warm press of her breasts against his chest, on the way she shudders whenever Gavin rocks into him and him into her, but it’s too much.

He comes with a jerk and a strangled gasp as Gavin achieves the perfect, star-studded angle that makes Michael’s every nerve turn into a livewire. “Fucking swiss fucking cheese,” he whines.

“Shoulda given the cockring to you this time,” Lindsay teases, and while Michael’s grateful that she doesn’t seem too disappointed in him, he frowns anyways.

“You guys are the fucking worst,” he growls, a second before he feels Gavin’s legs tense in the midst of the tangle, the other boy’s hands clenching around Michael’s middle. Michael groans when Gavin orgasms, properly conscious enough now to appreciate it, especially when Gavin bites down on his shoulder with that perfect amount of rough pressure that Michael craves. “Fuck, never mind. You guys are the best,” he moans.

Afterwards, once Gavin pulls out and Lindsay dismounts, they roll up the sheets into a bundle to join the previously discarded comforter in a corner of the room (Michael pities the poor cleaning ladies at this place), they rock paper scissors for who gets the privilege of the shower first. Surprising no one, Lindsay wins, and proceeds to flip them off and gleefully dance towards the bathroom.

“I should have won because I am clearly the biggest mess here,” Michael grumbles from where he’s moved to lay across Gavin, lazily drawing shapes down the seemingly infinite line of hair that stretches way past Gavin’s bellybutton.

“Hmm,” Gavin says, and Michael can’t tell if that’s an agreeing sound or a “ _I don’t care_ ” one. Whatever.

“In other news, you could reupholster a cat using only your treasure trail,” Michael remarks.

That earns him a smile, and Gavin reaches up to smack a hand to Michael’s forehead and ruffle his curls a bit. “You’re just jealous.”

“Not in the slightest.”

He beats Gavin out for second to use the bathroom, and picks his phone up off the mess of clothes on the floor as he goes, saluting to Gavin’s annoyed expression. “Ladies first,” he says.

“You take a dick like a lady,” Gavin retorts, sticking his tongue out.

“Heyo!” Michael grins, “And you like it. So shut up!”

Once he’s behind the door and in the brief shelter of privacy he sends off a quick text.

_Michael: 1 - Do you think it’s possible for a straight dude to have an “exception” to his heterosexuality? And 2 - Do you think aforementioned straight dude would still make a decent partner despite heterosexual history?_

He’s only been in the shower for six minutes when his phone goes off and absolutely scares the fucking shit out of him.

“Fighting evil by moonlight, winning love by daylight, never running from a real fight, she’s the one named-”

“Okay, oh my god, shut the fuck up,” Michael yells, fumbling with the shower curtain and nearly killing himself to answer it. Hands still wet and shower still running, he unlocks his phone and presses it to his ear. “What the fuck, Ray, just answer with a text like a normal person. This better not be costing me long distance.” He reaches down, careful to angle his body away from the spray while he turns the water off. “Was the question really that profoundly stupid that you had to call? Jesus.”

“I-What?” Ray says on the other end of the line. “No. I was just calling to, uh, clarify.”

Michael blinks, frowning at the discernable edge to Ray’s tone. “Clarify what, exactly?” He snags a towel off the rack and starts to rub it over his hair one handed.

“Whether or not you were talking about me, or one of your new friends across the pond.”

And there goes the towel. Towel meet floor. Michael, meet towel and floor, Michael thinks as he finds the wall with a hand and sinks to his knees on the fuzzy bathroom rug. “What?” the word sounds inhuman even to his own ears, so faint and broken that he feels sick after it leaves his lips.

“Was that text a reference to one of your new amigos,” Ray repeats, “Or was it about the fact that you’re in love with me.”

Shit. Shit shit shit fucking shit-mc-nuggets and cheese wiz _shit_. How the fuck even- No, wait, before he tries to wrap his head around now undeniable truth that Ray knows, he needs to fucking remember how his lungs work.

“Are you hyperventilating?” Ray says on the other end of the line.

“No!”

Yes he is.

Breathe. Breathe, Michael, Breathe. “Okay, maybe a little,” he admits because talking seems to help, talking kinda forces him to use and intake air. Talking is good.

There’s a pause. “I thought you knew . . .” Ray says slowly, confused, and Michael shakes his head before he remembers that no doi, this is a phone call.

“How the fuck would I know that?!” he snaps. “Why would you think that I knew that you knew and . . . God, damn it. My brain hurts.” He lowers his head into his freehand, desperately wishing he could get back in the shower and attempt to drown himself, which would be a hell of a lot less painful than this conversation.

“Uh, because you punched me?” Ray replies.

“I punched you because you were calling off the trip we’d been planning for like a year!”

“. . . That makes sense too . . .” Ray concedes.

He falls silent, the line between them growing laden with awkward tension. Great. This is just fucking great. Michael sighs and shuffles closer to the wall so that he’ll have something to lean against. “So you knew,” he says quietly.

“Yeah.”

“How long?”

“Since like freshman year, dude. Like the day you told me you turned down that Caleb kid for the Spring Fling not because you weren’t an equal opportunity guy, but because you were interested in someone else. You’re not very subtle.”

“Jesus Christ.” Michael thunks his head against the plaster.

“That’s a lovely compliment, but my name is Ray,” Ray says, and Michael can practically hear the smile in those words.

It’s enough to make him laugh, to push the pent up, nervous sound from his body and into the air to join with the relieved chuckle on Ray’s end. “You must think I’m twelve kinds of stupid right now,” Michael murmurs into the receiver.

“Nah. Just ten kinds.”

Michael smiles. “Do you hate me?”

“Scratch that,” Ray says, a tinge of annoyance rising into his tone, “Eleven kinds. What the fuck dude, of course I don’t hate you. I love the shit out of you. Maybe not in the way you wanted me to, but seriously, okay, you are my number one man five-ever. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“And I know you probably don’t think so, but you are totally going to find better dudes than me and be all, ‘Lol remember when I thought Ray was the bestest haha.’”

“That’s kinda what I was texting you about in the first place.”

Ray gasps. “What?! Whoa, hey now, that’s not the answer I wanted. You were supposed to say ‘No, Ray, never, you’re so beautiful and awesome I could never love anyone as much as you.’”

“I thought you wanted me to get over you,” Michael deadpans.

“I wanted you to shower me with flatteries first,” Ray snorts, “A dude can never have his ego stroked enough.”

Michael shakes his head, “I hate you.”

“You love me,” Ray insists. “You think I’m swell. We’re fucking bro soul mates and you can never escape me. Broulmates. I’m totally trade marking that shit and putting it on a t-shirt only you and I can wear. It’ll have unicorns and weed leaves on it.”

“Ray . . . No. Can we get back on topic?”

“I thought your big-homo feelings for me were the topic.”

“No, the topic was the sex I had with Gavin last night.”

Well that shuts Ray right up. Michael hears him fumble his phone for a moment before he yells, “Holy shit what the fuck!?” in his ear, loud enough that Michael has to hold his cell away from his face and wince. “Did you take it up the-”

“Ray!” Michael hisses.

“Right, you’re right, I don’t want to know. None of my business. The million dollar question here is whether or not he flew the coop on you again.”

“No, he’s still here.” Michael pauses and listens for the sounds of Gavin and Lindsay talking on the other side of the bathroom door just to reassure himself of that fact, smiling at Gavin’s telltale squawk in response to something she says.

“Well I don’t think it’s his heterosexual history you have to worry about then,” Ray says, “so much as his history of being a dickhead. You said he probably pulls the same stunt with girls too, right? He’s relationship skittish from the sounds of it.”

“So, what, should I just try and keep it to a sex-based thing?”

Ray makes a strained noise, “That probably won’t work out well in your favor unless you’re okay with it. I mean personally, that is not something I’d ever be down for with anyone. I’m a romantic.”

“Considering how fantastic the sex has been so far-”

“Seriously shut up, I actually don’t want to know even a little bit.”

“-I mean it’s not like I’d object? And Lindsay and Barbara seem to have a similar mindset to that and are making it work. It’s not like this can turn into anything long term anyways, what with the fucking Atlantic Ocean between us and shit once summer ends.”

“I wouldn’t put limitations like that on it if I were you. Don’t get ahead of yourself and sweep this under the rug already. There’s still four more days till it’s even July, and you’re not even flying back till the end of August,” Ray reminds. “Maybe just see where it goes, and then call me if he fucks up because I will totally fly over there and punch him for you.”

“On what money?” Michael rolls his eyes. “You spent it all getting from New York to California and showering Courtney with gifts.”

“I don’t need money, I have the power of being your broulmate.”

“That’s not a word.”

“It is now. Shut it.”

Michael laughs.

He still doesn’t have his shit together, still doesn’t know how to describe or label whatever he’s allowed to begin to bloom between himself and Gavin, and still doesn’t have a single fucking clue on how he’s going to spend the rest of the summer. But fuck it, he’s going to laugh anyways, because despite all the puzzles yet to be solved and sorted, it’s a damn good morning anyways.

**Author's Note:**

> Eventually there will be a Part 3. Not until after I finish my Ragehappy Fic Bang though, so it might not be for awhile :|
> 
> Somehow, Michael ended up being fairly gender neutral in this part. Maybe once he used Barbara's shirt in part one he just gave up 99% of his fucks. Also I adore the idea of Micheal letting the girls use him as a dress-up doll without much protest. It's cute. Shut up. PURPLE NAIL POLISH OKAY!
> 
> There's still a lot to get through with this fic, though hopefully Part 3 will be shorter, maybe the same length as Part 1. This is primarily a coming-of-age story for Michael, hence the scenes where he's wont to talk through his thoughts and problems with Gavin and the girls in really broad, often philosophical manners. My apologies if any of it makes your head spin. As someone who's graduating college within the next month, I've been having a lot of similar thoughts to those Michael has during those parts, minor existential crises and all, and that's kinda the reason those scenes ended up like that. Whatever though.
> 
> Again, mega kudos to whoever spotted the youtube dork patrol cameo, and extra to whoever caught Lindsay's line as well.


End file.
